494 REPORT ON ZOOLOGY, MDCCCXLIV. 



HELMINTHES DUBIL 



A case is related by Scortegagna (Omodei Annali, Nov. 

 1844, p. 301), in which, by the use of Chabert's oil, two new 

 worms were expelled, which he has named Lumbricus ros- 

 tratus, and Fllaria policoioma, but not described more par- 

 ticularly. 



Behn (Amtl. Bericht iiber die 22te Vers. der Naturf. u. 

 Aerzte in Bremen, 1844; Abth. ii, p. 113) found the exter- 

 nal surface of the blood-vessels of Chelonia midas covered 

 with tumours of various sizes, formed of a thick capsule, 

 the contents of which appeared like a black substance (by 

 transmitted or reflected light?), but which under the micro- 

 scope proved evidently to be worms. Erdl (these Archiv, 

 1843, Bd. i, p. 162) has described and figured the moving 

 filaments in the venous cavities of the Cephalopoda, which 

 had been already noticed by Krohn, in Froriep's neueu 

 Notizen, 1843, Nr. 214, p. 214, several years before. They 

 form elongated intestiuiform sacculi or tubes, which twist 

 around, lengthen and shorten themselves, and are curved 

 into arches or rings, during which the creatures turn quickly 

 round in a circle by means of the long cilia with which the 

 whole surface of their body is covered. A wider cephalic 

 extremity can be distinguished in them, in which, according 

 to Erdl, an oral orifice is said to be situated, but the 

 Reporter has never been able to perceive more than a pit- 

 like depression in that situation, which enabled the ani- 

 malcules to employ their cephalic extremity as a suctorial 

 disc. In their interior were globular corpuscles, in various 

 degrees of development, one behind the other, which, when 

 the development was more advanced, moved about like 

 infusoria by means of a ciliated epithelium. The Reporter 

 was inclined to look upon these curious creatures with their 

 infusoria-like contents as the saccular larvae of an animal 

 subject to an alternation of generations. With reference 

 to this we cannot refrain from noticing the similarity of these 



O ,' 



