Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/133

Rh is present, being unequally developed only in those few forms which are inequivalve. The typical pericardium is well developed. It, as in other Mollusca, is not a blood-space but develops from the coelom, and it communicates with the exterior by the pair of renal tubes. As in Cephalopoda (and possibly other Mollusca) water can be introduced through the nephridia into this space. The alimentary canal keeps very nearly to the median vertical plane whilst exhibiting a number of flexures and loopings in this plane. A pair of large glandular outgrowths, the so-called “liver” or great digestive gland, exists as in other Molluscs. A pair of pedal otocysts, and a pair of osphradia at the base of the gills, appear to be always present. A typical nervous system is present (fig. 19), consisting of a cerebro-pleural ganglion-pair, united by connectives to a pedal ganglion-pair and a visceral ganglion-pair (parieto-splanchnic).

A pyloric caecum connected with the stomach is commonly found, containing a tough flexible cylinder of transparent cartilaginous appearance, called the “crystalline style” (Mactra). In many Lamellibranchs a gland is found on the hinder surface of the foot in the mid line, which secretes a substance which sets into the form of threads—the so-called “byssus”—by means of which the animal can fix itself. Sometimes this gland is found in the young and not in the adult (Anodonta, Unio, Cyclas). In some Lamellibranchs (Pecten, Spondylus, Pholas, Mactra, Tellina, Pectunculus, Galeomma, &c.), although cephalic eyes are generally absent, special eyes are developed on the free margin of the mantle-skirt, apparently by the modification of tentacles commonly found there. There are no pores in the foot or elsewhere in Lamellibranchia by which water can pass into and out of the vascular system, as formerly asserted.

The Lamellibranchia live chiefly in the sea, some in fresh waters. A very few have the power of swimming by opening and shutting the valves of the shell (Pecten, Lima); most can crawl slowly or burrow rapidly; others are, when adult, permanently fixed to stones or rocks either by the shell or the byssus. In development some Lamellibranchia pass through a free-swimming trochosphere stage with pre-oral ciliated band; other fresh-water forms which carry the young in brood-pouches formed by the ctenidia have suppressed this larval phase.

As an example of the organization of a Lamellibranch, we shall review the structure of the common pond-mussel or swan mussel (Anodonta cygnea), comparing it with other Lamellibranchia.

The swan-mussel has superficially a perfectly developed bilateral symmetry. The left side of the animal is seen as when removed from its shell in fig. 1 (1). The valves of the shell have been removed by severing their adhesions to the muscular areae h, i, k, l, m, u. The free edge of the left half of the mantle-skirt b is represented as a little contracted in order to show the exactly similar free edge of the right half of the mantle-skirt c. These edges are not attached to, although they touch, one another; each flap (right or left) can be freely thrown back in the way carried out in fig. 1 (3) for that of the left side. This is not always the case with Lamellibranchs; there is in the group a tendency for the corresponding edges of the mantle-skirt to fuse together by concrescence, and so to form a more or less completely closed bag, as in the Scaphopoda (Dentalium). In this way the notches d, e of the hinder part of the mantle-skirt of Anodonta are in the siphonate forms converted into two separate holes, the edges of the mantle being elsewhere fused together along this hinder margin. Further than this, the part of the mantle-skirt bounding the two holes is frequently drawn out so as to form a pair of tubes which project from the shell (figs. 8, 29). In such Lamellibranchs as the oysters, scallops and many others which have the edges of the mantle-skirt quite free, there are numerous tentacles upon those edges.