46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 81 



place for Diptera. The transmission of the worm from the fly to 

 the horse appears to present several compHcations. It was surmised by 

 Ransom that horses might swallow flies which had fallen in drinking 

 troughs or were benumbed in feed troughs on cold mornings. Sub- 

 sequent work has indicated that the worms may escape from the 

 proboscis of flies as they feed on the moist lips of horses, and pre- 

 sumably these worms may get to the stomach and develop to adult 

 worms. However, if the fly feeds on the conjunctiva of the eye the 

 larval worms may escape to the eye, remaining there as larvae and 

 causing a habronemic conjunctivitis. If the fly feeds on a wound, the 

 worms may escape and remain in the wound as larvae, causing " sum- 

 mer sores " or cutaneous habronemiasis. Finally, the worms may be 

 found as larvae in the lungs, causing pulmonary habronemiasis, but 

 the precise method of infection here remains to be ascertained. These 

 cases illustrate the fact that there are numerous deviations from the 

 cut-and-dried rule that intermediate hosts either transmit worms by 

 being eaten by the primary host, or else transmit the worms by biting 

 the primary host. 



One member of the Siphonaptera occurs as a somewhat doubtful 

 host of a rat spirurid, Protospiriira nmris, but the case for this should 

 be developed by feeding experiments. 



The one bird nematode of the family Spiruridae having a known 

 life history is Hartcrtia galUnarum, and this worm utilizes a termite 

 as its intermediate host, the host here serving as food for chickens 

 which devour them with great eagerness. 



THELAZIIDAE 



In the Thelaziidae, we have a member of the Orthoptera, the 

 roach Pycnoscelis surhiamensis, serving as the intermediate host of 

 the chicken eyeworm, Oxyspirura mansoni, and also for the somewhat 

 dubious species, O. parvovum, distinguished from O. rnavsoni only by 

 the smaller size of the egg. This life history was worked out by 

 Fielding in Australia and somewhat later, but independently, by 

 Sanders in Florida in the United States. At present the eyeworm, 

 0. mansoni, appears to be confined in the United States to Florida, 

 so far as our records show, but the intermediate host now has a much 

 wider range in this country and unless measures are taken to stamp 

 out the worm in Florida we can confidently expect it to spread beyond 

 the confines of that state. The movements of the infected primary 

 and secondary hosts by the swift methods of modern transportation 

 over wide areas can hardly fail to ensure this result. [Since the above 

 was written, the eyeworm has been found outside of Florida in this 

 country.] 



