A Study of Metamerism

Abstract

That there were occasionally to be found in the Annelids irregularities in the serial repetition of the rings seems to have been known to several of the earlier writers on descriptive and systematic zoology. The fact did not attract more than a passing attention, and such irregularities were relegated to that waste-heap of abnormalities from which subsequent investigation has often drawn valuable material. Simultaneously in 1892 two articles appeared dealing with these abnormal conditions, one by C. J. Cori (13), and the other by the present writer (33). Both writers pointed out the general interest attached to these modifications, and their importance for an interpretation of the general problem of metamerism. Subsequently a third paper appeared (10), recording the presence of similar abnormalities in many groups of Annelids, but without making any attempt to solve the problem itself. My own paper was only a preliminary notice, and until the present time I have not had an opportunity of fully describing the material that I had at that time already accumulated, studied, and drawn. The present paper attempts to give a full consideration of the facts only touched on before, and to extend over a wider field the conclusions reached.

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