59 



teus, from Africa. The wings, drawn out from beneath 

 the elytrae, measured four and one half inches from tip 

 to tip. 



The following named gentlemen were elected Resident 

 Members, viz: Alfred E. Giles, 1. T. Talbot, of Boston ; 

 Ambrose Wellington of Cambridge, A. T. Cummings of 

 Roxbury, and Edwin Harrison of the Lawrence Scien- 

 tific School. 



November 5, 1856. 



The President in the Chair. 



Dr. David F. Weinland read the following paper, 

 entitled - 



OBSERVATIONS ON A NEW GENUS OF T^NIOIDS. 



In the middle of April, 1856, I found a single living sjiecimen 

 of a new kind of tapeworm in the small intestine of our gold- 

 winged woodpecker (Picus auratus). This Taenia is remarkable 

 for the structure of its organs of reproduction. 



As in the human tapeworm {Tcenia solhini), so also in this, the 

 genital openings alternate from one articulation to the next ; but 

 in the former, and as seems generally to be the case in T^enioids, 

 the testicles lie in the middle of each articulation. (See Von 

 Siebold, Vergleichende Anatomic der wirbellosen Thiere, pri47 ; 

 and the figure in Blanchard, Recherches sur Forganization des 

 Vers, pi. 15; f. 4, 7.) They were placed, on the contrary, in 

 the tapeworm of the woodpecker, in the anterior part of the 

 articulation, just in front of the genital opening, fiUing up by a 

 large mass of convolute spermatic canals all that part of the 

 articulation, and thus excluding from it the uterus. Further- 

 more, the uterus did not consist of branched, treelike canals, 

 (see Blanchard, 1. c.) but on the contrary of a large number of 

 balls, perhaps connected with each other by slender ducts. Von 

 Siebold, 1. c. p. 146, and note 23, seems to speak of a similar 



