OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 435 



active cause of splenic fever, together with the more general 

 question of Contagium Yivum, will be found discussed and illus- 

 trated in the same periodical. The extraordinary relations 

 between man and the musquito, as unconscious confederates in 

 the production of Elephantiasis, by means of the Filaria sanguis 

 hommis, are explained in a paper by Dr. Manson, published in 

 the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," to which 

 reference has already been made. It seems not unlikely that 

 many other Endemic or local diseases will ultimately have their 

 origin explained in a similar way ; so that there is ground for a 

 hope that we may be enabled to extinguish them by removing 

 one of the two conditions under whose combination their living 

 causes can alone exist. Another Filaria {F. 7'hi/to2)leu7'itis) was 

 found encysted in the common Cockroach as long ago as 1824, 

 by Deslongchamps, and M. Osman Galeb has lately found the 

 perfect or reproductive form of the same Nematoid in the intes- 

 tines of the common Rat (" Comptes Rendus," July, 1878, p. 75). 

 The ova, as discharged in the fa3ces, are swallowed by the Cock- 

 roach, which, in its turn, is eaten by the Rat. So also the Black 

 Beetle {Tenebrio molitor), and the common Mouse combine to 

 support their mutual parasite, Spiroptera ohtusa. In the same 

 way the Shrew, and one of the Ghilognatliidce, a species of Glo- 

 meris, maintain between them a certain Tapeworm {Tcenia pistiUuTn) 

 whose history has been traced by M. A. Billop (" Comptes Ren- 

 dus," Nov. 19, 1877. p. 971). 



Considering the amount of pain, sickness, and disaster caused 

 by such truly Amphibious animals, as Fluke, Hydatid, and Tape- 

 worm, one is surprised to find that the facts already ascertained 

 by Science should not be more generally known among educated 

 people. Their attention cannot be too frequently or too empha- 

 tically invited to the subject, which really concerns the health and 

 prosperity of the nation. 



It may not be out of place here to mention that the first part 

 of the " Osteographie des Monotremes vivants et fossiles," by P. 

 Gervais, has now been published. The extreme isolation of the 

 family, entirely Australian, and consisting of only two genera, 

 Ornithorhynchus and Echidna, and the extra-mammalian rela- 



