NOTES FROM THE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY 

 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE. 



By W. Baldwin Spencer, 



Professor of Biology iu the Uuiversity of Melbourne. 



(1) On the presence of a FluJye in the Egg of a Foivl. 



I owe the specimens, upon examination of which this note 

 is founded, to the kindness of Miss Stone, of St. Kilda, by 

 whom they were found, and to whom my best thanks are 

 due, for the very kind and untiring assistance which she 

 rendered in searching for the animals in a great number of 

 eggs. Miss Stone Avas successful in finding the living 

 Trematode in three eggs and undoubted traces of the animal 

 in numerous others obtained both in Melbourne and Ballarat, 

 and she has thus succeeded in showing that the animal, 

 which has been but comparatively rarely recorded before 

 from the hen's Qgg, is probably not infrequentl}^ present iu 

 this position in Australia, and that its ova protected in their 

 hard cases, are really often to be found in the hen's eo-g. 

 The animal itself was first described and named b}^ Rudolph 

 as occurring in the bursa fabricia of different birds, and 

 hence the adult on rare occasions apparently travels up the 

 oviduct and reaching the part in which the " white of the 

 egg" is formed, becomes entangled in this and carried down 

 again, till finally the shell is secreted on the outside and the 

 animal enclosed. The fluke was close to the ovum in the 

 centre,and therefore must have travelled a considerable distance 

 up the oviduct, or may have worked its way in towards 

 the centre, after deposition of the egg. In the majoi-ity of 

 cases there were present in the eggs what were undoubtedly 

 remains of flukes in a more or less decomposed state. Their 

 nature was rendered evident by the presence of the very 

 characteristic ova of the flukes with the minute oval brown- 

 coloured &gg cases. How long these ova could remain alive, 

 and Avhether when swallowed by some other animal they 

 would develop, it is of course impossible to say, without 

 experiment. 



