THE COLLECTION OF PARASITIC WORMS 



BY 



J. H. SANDGROUND 



The establishment of a division of helminthology is one of the very 

 recent innovations of the Museum. Rather than an innovation this 

 might perhaps be termed a revival, for the development of a hel- 

 minthological collection in the Museum probably started when Dr. 

 D. F. VVeinland, whose name is well known in the literature on the 

 subject, was called from the Museum of Berlin to become associated 

 with Professor Agassiz in the study of the then little known fauna of 

 America. VVeinland records having made extensive examinations of 

 American animals for parasitic worms, but what became of this col- 

 lection is unknown. 



That considerable interest must have obtained in the field of 

 parasitology is attested by the large and heterogeneous collection of 

 tubed specimens, donated by numerous investigators in various 

 branches of zoology, that had accumulated and were brought to 

 light with the recent reorganization of the various collections. The 

 absence of anybody on the Museum staff equipped with special 

 knowledge in this important and rapidly growing subject led to the 

 neglect of this material. When the present curator was appointed in 

 1928 to take charge of and build up the collection, much of the old 

 material had to be discarded because of bad preservation, desicca- 

 tion and the absence of labels carrying the necessary information for 

 the proper identification of specimens. Among various smaller series 

 that could be salvaged from the old collection was a number of tubes 

 containing the types of North American Gordiacea described by 

 Montgomery in a bulletin of the Museum in 1898. 



The collection, as it stands at present in the catalogue, is still very 

 small when compared with collections in those few American in- 

 stitutions where helminthology has been a continuously living 

 interest. 



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