510 



THE CAT. 



[chap. XIV. 



seen tens of thousands of them occupying the lungs ; the infested 

 animal perishing in confc:equcnce of the inflammatory action set up 

 by their presence." 



" A certain number of the embryos of Olulanus escape by the bowel 

 of the host. These when SAvallowed by mice become encysted within 

 the little rodents' muscles, very much after the fashion of Trichince. 

 So that one may say the mice become olulanised in the same way 

 that we say people or animals become trichinised. All this has been 

 experimentally proved by Leuckart, who fed a cat with olulanised 

 mouse-flesh, and afterwards found the escaped young in the cat's 

 alimentary canal. As, however, these encapsuled OMani from the 

 mouse had not become sufficiently advanced in their larval* organi- 

 sation, Leuckart did not succeed in rearing the sexually mature 

 parasite in the feline stomach. But there could be no doubt as to the 



ultimate destiny of the encapsuled young Tcenia crassicollis, 



which is common to both the tame and wild animal, is obtained by 

 the cat from eating the livers of rats and mice, in which organ the 

 larvee of the parasite reside. Tariiia lineata is found only in the wild 

 cat. Bothriocephalus decipicus is extremely rare, and only known in 

 the house cat. The most common of all the species is Tcenia 

 ellipHca." Tcenia littcrata exists in Iceland, but has also been found 

 to infest the cheetah. It must therefore have a wide distribution. 



One of the most remarkable instances of the destruction of cats 

 by internal parasites is that recorded by Dr. Romano, of Gemona. 

 The animals perished from colic, diarrhoea, epileptiform convulsions, 

 wasting, and complete prostration. All these symptoms resulted 

 from tapeworms {Twnia crassicollis) \^dthin the stomach. The out- 

 break occurred at Osoppo, where the fortress was over-run by rats. 

 The vermin were combated by means of the cats, and thus the most 

 successfal felines became the earliest victims. Those which killed the 

 rats and ate their livers swallowed the larva) of the Twnia, which 

 latter, en revanche, brought about the destruction of their feline hosts.f 



Another internal parasite is the worm-like animal Pcntastoma 

 dentic\i latum, which is a very aberrant member of the class 

 Arachnida. 



As to the cat's external parasites, they belong to two orders of 

 the class Insecta (the order Aphanijjfera, which contains the fleas, 

 and the order Ai^tcra, w^hich is the order to which lice belong), 

 and to the class Arachnida. 



The cat's flea,^ Pulcx cati, is very like the flea of the dog, but is 

 one-fourth smaller. 



The louse-like animal of the cat docs not belong to the same 



* The tape-worms liavo two stages of 

 existence, correspomUns with the grub 

 (or larval) coiulitioii, ami the perfect (or 

 imago) state of the beetle or butterlly. 



f See Cobbold's account (Parasites, 

 I. c), abridged from Koniano's report in 

 Giornale di mod. vet. pratica for August, 

 1877. 



J See a paper by Dr. Alexander La- 

 boulbenc, on Los Metamorphoses de la 

 Puce du Cliat, in the Annales de la Soc. 

 Entomologique de J''rancc, 5th series, 

 voh ii., 1872, p. 267, plate 13 ; also 

 r. llegnin's Parasites, ilasson, Paris, 

 1880, 63. 



