16 ART. 7. — .1 IJIMA. 



broad hind parts of the older specimens. Especially abundant 

 are they in those irregularly shaped, independent pieces which 

 bear a number of head-buds. The head or the anterior parts of 

 the worm are generally devoid of the bodies in question ; but this 

 is not always the case, as sometimes a limited number of the bodies 

 occur even as far as a position close to the tip of the head. A 

 few cases in which a small group of them was situated at the 

 head-end misled me for a time into thinking that I probably had 

 suckers before me. Small and young Plerocercoids, evidently re- 

 cently detached from the mother-body, mostly showed no trace 

 at all of the bodies under consideration. In all probability they 

 are something which develops and grows both in size and number 

 as the worm gets older and which, I may add, begins to undergo 

 a disintegrating process after a certain period of existence. 



In an early stage of development the bodies are small, spheri- 

 cal or irregular-shaped masses appearing very much like yolk- 

 granules, — homogeneous, refractive and strongly stainable. The 

 circumstances of their occurrence and the shape of the larger ones 

 were often such as suggested the formation of these by coalescence 

 of several smaller ones. The bodies may grow to a size of 150 n 

 or more in diameter, retaining the original compact aj)pearance, 

 though in sections they usually appear more or less broken into 

 irregular fragments separated by narrow fissures. As yet they 

 seem to l)e imbedded directly in the parenchyma, exhibiting 

 neither a vacant space around them nor a special enveloping 

 membrane. As already mentioned, the same bodies after growing 

 to a certain size begin to show signs of dissolution in that they, 

 begining at the periphery, break up into finer or coarser granules 

 as well as into conglomerate-like spherules that appear much like 

 the wdiite yolk-spheres of a hen's egg. Thus, the body may now 



