Aug. 1, 1S69.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



183 



epitaph ; but it doesn't " rest in peace/' for, worried 

 to death during its lifetime, it is cut up into delicate 

 bits, and exposed to the gaze of the curious after- 

 wards. Yes, Dr. Thudichum's "illustration" is no 

 more: after surviving three years' torment before 

 the savans of our institutions, it died, poor thing, 

 from the effects of a slight cold. Of all the terribly 

 liumilating diseases to which mankind is heir, per- 

 haps that of Trichini is among the very worst : to 

 be literally eaten up, like Herod, of worms ! and 

 such marvellously little worms too. There may be 

 some satisfaction in being swallowed by a boa, but 

 fancy being despatched by creatures whose indi- 

 vidual length is the ^ytts hundred thousandth of a 

 line. Well, the disease must be understood, and 

 its diagnosis chronicled ; so, as human beings — some 

 of them at least — are of more value than many rab- 

 bits, some other vertebrate must be selected, and in 

 the learned doctor's case it was a rabbit. A small 

 piece of a dead man recently killed by this class of 

 Entozoa, was forced down the rabbit's mouth, and 

 as soon as the flesh was dissolved, the cysts in which 

 the worms abode were set free, and breeding began, 

 and very soon after, from various parts of the 

 animal's body, small parts of its muscles were 

 snipped up with the forceps, in which plenty of the 

 re-encysted worms were discovered. Three or four 

 times the rabbit was re-Trichinized, each time 

 " successfully ; " but the otherwise happy condition 

 of the animal's life, and its good health, protracted 

 its latter end for about three years, and then, as I 

 have said, it died of a cold, and falling into skilful 

 hands, it was taken to pieces and injected, and in 

 all parts of its muscles a large colony of Trichini 

 were exposed comfortably coiled up in their chalk 

 cottages between the ultimate fibre of the voluntary 

 muscles. In a preparation from the biceps muscle 

 of a child four and a half years old, who died on the 

 79th day after the discovery of the disease, fifty- 

 eight thousand Trichini were computed in the fifth 

 part of a grain, while in the entire muscles of a 

 man, weighing 40 pounds, so many as twenty-eight 

 millions have been reckoned, whose united length 

 would be equal to the incredible number of ninety 

 English miles, causing the entire disintegration of 

 the muscular fibre, and destroying the mechanical 

 action of the heart. Not very pleasant, is it ? But 

 don't be alarmed ; it very rarely happens that fatal 

 cases happen, except it be from eating raw or in- 

 ferior and badly-cooked meat ; and even then it is 

 with some persons long before the end comes. In 

 Dr. Thudichum's specimens prepared by Mr. Nor- 

 man, of 178, City Road, the cysts are very freely 

 distributed in the fibre of the muscle of the tongue. 

 In a beautifully injected specimen I purchased there, 

 I discovered in the length of one-third of an inch 

 about fifty, and very strikingly have they built up 

 their houses between the walls of the striped fibre. 

 The voluntary muscles appear to be the Trichini 



hunting-grounds, and so many as 1,000 have been 

 observed to be produced by one female every two or 

 three weeks ; but sometimes they got the worst of 

 it, and then they are buried alive in their own 

 coffins. Professor Owen first mentioned the disease 

 in 1835, and the recent experiments made by Dr. 

 Thudichum with his rabbit have gone very far to 

 discover its natural history and the method of its 

 cure, though the best "prevention" is to be found 

 in not eating raw ham, and eschewing half-cooked 

 pork; but, for the curious, an examination of the 

 roads travelled by Trichini along the happy land of 

 Doctor Thudichum's rabbit's tongue, or any other 

 part of its body, is employment for the microscope 

 of a very interesting kind; for, at the same time, so 

 skilfully are the injections prepared, that the capil- 

 laries of the papillse are seen with the quarter ob- 

 jective very distinctly, while the striped fibre of the 

 voluntary, and the simple fibre of the involuntaiy 

 muscles, are everywhere studded with encysted 

 Trichini, besides a great deal of other interesting 

 matter. J. Crowthek. 



ERAGILLARIA CROTONENSIS. 



X AM obliged to Mr. Roper for reminding me of 

 -*- an omission in my paper on the Croton-water 

 forms of diatomaccge. I ought to have mentioned 

 Fragillaria crotonensis was F. capucina, var. y of 

 the Synopsis. I am not prepared, however, to admit 

 that this species is only a variety of F. capucina. 

 Professor Smith describes his var. y from the Ros- 

 thorn Mere gathering, and he is right in'sayingimper- 

 fectly silicious ; but I do not think this has any- 

 thing to do with the non-attachment of the frustules 

 excepting at the centre ; in other words, the cen- 

 tral inflation is the normal state of the frustule. 

 The Croton-water species is firmly silicious, and the 

 inflations as distinct in the wet frustule as when 

 dried and burnt on the slide. My lamented friend 

 Dr. Arnott, to whom I am indebted for the Ros- 

 thorn Mere slide, and a suite of specimens of Fra- 

 gillaria (57), says in his letter, "I send you the droll 

 form of F. capucina y, Smith ;" and I find in his 

 reply to my acknowledgment of . the slides this 

 remark : " I think we had better refer this form to 

 F. capucina until we find vigorous specimens." 

 This, I think, has been done in the " Croton-water 

 sediment." Further correspondence was prevented 

 by the illness and death of my valued friend. 



I have greater doubts of the genus than the 

 species of this form, and if thehlamentous arrange- 

 ment of the frustule is ignored, I see nothing to dis- 

 tinguish it from Synedra, and Professor Smith has 

 done so in his Synedra fontinalis, and which is iden- 

 tical with the Fragillaria tenuicollis of Heiberg. 



It has been suggested that F. capucina, Synedra 

 fasciculata, S. minutissima, and S. pv.lcliella are all 

 one species. E. Kitton. 



