TRANSMIGRATIONS AND METAMORPHOSES. 199 



feeds. Its principal abode is in the ruminants and 

 only casually in man. It is said to be unknown in 

 Iceland. The Distomuni lanceolaticm has also been found 

 in man. 



Dr. Bilharz, the pupil of Siebold, discovered in the 

 year 1851, on man, a parasite in every respect remark- 

 able. It belongs to the family of the Distomidae, and on 

 account of its peculiarities, it has been made into a 

 genus under the name of Bilharzia. It is found in 

 Egypt, and lives in the vena portse and in all its ramifi- 

 cations in man. According to Bilharz, this distomian 

 is dioecious, the male being of considerable size, the 

 female slender "and delicate, which fact does not agree 

 with the usual characteristics of dioecious animals. At 

 least half of the Fellahs and Copts suffer from these 

 parasites ; these worms, at the period w^hen they lay 

 their eggs, proceed from the vena cava to the veins of 

 the pelvis, and after having produced very grave con- 

 sequences, they are at last evacuated with the urine. 



Another distome was also found by Bilharz in the 

 intestines of a young Egyptian boy. 



The largest known distome inhabits the liver of the 

 Balenoptera rostrata, the little whale of thirty feet in 

 length, which is regularly met with on the coast of 

 Norway. The intestines of the ordinary seal often con- 

 tain a very curious distome, w^iich was first observed by 

 Eudolphie, the D. acanthoides. The seal is also infested 

 by the Distomuni cornus, which some have incorrectly 

 preferred to place in the genus Amphistoma. 



Besides the distomes w4iich inhabit the liver, there 

 are found but few in the mammalia, except in the 

 Cheiroptera : these insectivorous animals have their 



