36 QUARTERLY CHRONICLE. 



are the minute bodies wliich occur in muscular tissue, and 

 whicli were known as " Cattle Plague Entozoa " in this 

 country a year or two since. They have, of course, nothing 

 to do with cattle plague, and were well known to the German 

 microscopists twenty years since, and have also been described 

 by Mr. Raincy, who regarded them as embryo-cysticeri, 

 from the pig, in 1859. Dr. Beale's paper in the ^Med. 

 Times and Gazette,' in which he described these sacculi 

 very carefully at the time when they attracted atten- 

 tion in England, is not referred to by Professor Manz. It is 

 a very strange thing that not one of the writers on these animals 

 (which evidently belong to the group of Gregarinida) has 

 given them a name. AYe offer that of Sarcocystis Miescheri 

 for the use of future writers. Professor Manz observes that 

 the common cylindrical form of these vesicles depends entirely 

 on their size ; and the change of size is the consequence 

 of a development which takes place longitudinally ; the 

 thickness does not depend upon this ; they are some- 

 times broader and sometimes narrower than the primitive 

 bundle of muscular tissue in w^hicli they occur. The tunic 

 of the sacculi is composed of a fine homogeneous membrane 

 which surrounds its contents pretty close. From some observa- 

 tions made on decomposing sacculi, the author thought the 

 tunic was very porous, but in fresh subjects I could discover 

 no trace of such a condition. 



Smaller sacculi from the jjig were observed, which were 

 acuminate at one, or, more frequently, at both ends ; and at 

 these points a conical space was left containing no reniform 

 corpuscles, but only brilliant granules. A very important 

 character of the tunic of the sacculi is the presence of a 

 ciliary investment, which was first described by Mr. Rainey. 

 This exists, however, only on the smaller or younger sacculi ; 

 it is of a very delicate nature, and may easily be detached in 

 the extraction of the sacculus from its site. Its aspect con- 

 veyed to the author the same impression that it has done to 

 Leuckart, viz. that it is due to a cuticular fissuring or stria- 

 tion, rather than to the existence of actual cilia, lor ciliary 

 movement has never been witnessed in it. 



The contents of the sacculi consist of a homoo-eneous, 

 very transparent, gelatinous substance, in whichare imbedded 

 the well-known kidney- or bean-shaped corpuscles. But 

 besides these the author has noticed bodies of a crescentic 

 form, and pointed at each end ; and also, but more rarely, 

 straight rods, and, lastly, sj^herical corpuscles. The latter 

 appear to have a special significance, inasmuch as they repre- 

 sent the earlier stage of development of the others. They are 

 found chiefly, if not exclusively, in the smallest sacculi. 



