ZOOLOGY. 429 



they were killed, and each had in its intestine a living Ligu- 

 la, with genital organs developed, and the matrices filled 

 with eggs, just as with the duck. 



A general account of the anatomy of the fluke -worm 

 (Distomum crassicolle), by Dr. C. S. Minot, appears in the 

 "Memoirs" of the Boston Society of Natural History. He 

 calls attention to the close relationship of the flukes and tape- 

 worms, and chronicles some new anatomical discoveries. 



It has been found to be probable that the spread of va- 

 rious forms of elephantoid disease, perhaps even leprosy, is 

 due to a very minute worm, closely allied to the large Guinea 

 worm, the microscopic species being called Fllaria sanguinis 

 hominis. The eggs of this worm in India are swallowed in 

 water drunk by men, and hatched out in the intestines. 

 Hence it bores through the tissues into the blood-vessels, 

 where it matures and carries on its work of obstruction. 

 The process of reproduction, however, is carried on in an- 

 other pest i. e., the mosquito. This much-abused insect ac- 

 quires a fresh title to its noxious reputation in its supposed 

 propagation of such a dreadful disease as leprosy. In India 

 it has been found that the blood it sucks from leprous pa- 

 tients contains Filarice with eggs, contained in the blood 

 of its human victims. In the mosquito the worms remain 

 until the eggs are ripe, when they are voided in the pools of 

 water it frequents. The eggs are then drunk by human 

 beings, and the cycle of life, with its ghastly results, begins 

 anew. 



At a late meeting of the French Academy, Messrs. Galeb 

 and Pourquier remarked that they had found Filarian worms 

 in the blood of the foetus of a bitch, whose heart was teem- 

 ing with them ; the embryos, doubtless, passed through from 

 mother to offspring. This explanation destroys the idea of 

 verminous diathesis and of spontaneous generation, called in 

 to explain the genesis of such Hcmnatozoa. The authors 

 also verify M. Davaine's view that the Nematoid worms cir- 

 culating in the vessels of certain do^s are larvre of the Use- 

 matic Filarim. 



That the blood of the earth-w T orm was free from corpuscles 

 has been the generally received opinion ; but it appears, from 

 recent investigations of Professor Ray Lankester, that cor- 

 puscles exist in abundance in the larger, and even in the 



