RESEARCHES IN HEI.MINTHOLOGY AND PARASITOLOGY. II 5 



was injected with chloride of zinc ; yet two days afterwards the para- 

 sites were still alive. None of the injection, however, had come 

 into contact with it, as it had no direct communication with the 

 body. The Echinococcus is the larval form of a tape- worm. Dr. 

 Leidy described its mode of propagation and of locating itself in the 

 body. 



[May, 1858. No. 213. See Bibliography.] 



Dr. Leidy exhibited a minnow, caught in the Schuylkill, having 

 di.sease of the scales of the upper part of the head and about the 

 orbit. The scales were dilated, and filled with delicate organic 

 cells, much resembling carcinomatous cells. They were certainly 

 not confervoid or fungous, but were purely pathological, and thus 

 of interest as a specimen of diseased formation in a fish. Disease 

 in the inferior animals, and even in plants, is deserving of study by 

 medical men, since it may throw light upon the nature of disease in 

 man. 



[December 1858. No. 216. See Bibliography.] 



Dr. Leidy called the attention of the members to the stomach of a 

 mink {Hhistela vison) , containing a large number of worms. The 

 latter had caused much thickening of the walls of the stomach, in 

 which the anterior extremity of their body deeply penetrated. The 

 worm is a species, heretofore unnoticed, of the genus Cheiracantlms . 

 Its name and characters were given as follows : 



Cheiracanthus Socialis, Leidy. Body cylindrical, posteriori}^ ob- 

 tuse, anus subterminal. Integument transparent, with distinct cir- 

 cular muscles. Head discrete, discoidal, furnished with transverse 

 rows of recurved hooks. Mouth bilabiate ; oesophagus clavate, red ; 

 intestine dusky brown. Ovaries and oviducts, or testes and vasa 

 deferentia, very tortuous and white. Anterior portion of the body 

 thickly covered with alternating transverse rows of minute plates, 

 of which those most anterior are tridentate, the succeeding ones 

 bidentate, and the last ones are simple and gradually become obso- 

 lete. Posterior extremit}^ of the male attenuated, spirally contorted, 

 and ending in a horseshoe-like border with four red papillae on each 

 side. 



Length of female 15 lines ; breadth 3-4ths of a line ; length of 

 male 12 lines, breadth 14 a line. 



