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XXXVI. On the Anatomy of Linguatula Tenioides, Cuv. By Ricuarp Owen, Esq., 
F.R.S. & Z.8., Assistant Conservator of the Museum of the Royal Cc!lege of Surgeons 
in London. 
Communicated February 24, 1835. 
Havine lately, through the kindness of Mr. Langstaff, had an opportunity of dis- 
secting a fine specimen of Linguatula Tenioides, Cuv.,! 1 am induced to submit to the 
Society a few observations on the internal structure of this highly organized Ento- 
soon. The anatomy of Linguatula has already been treated of by Cuvier and Rudolphi: 
the former briefly subjoins the results of his dissection to the character of the genus in 
the ‘ Régne Animal’? ; the latter has distributed his latest observations in the different 
sections of the anatomical Mantissa of the ‘Synopsis Entozoorum’’. Besides these 
authors I am not aware of any other who has published on this subject ; and I have not 
yet met with any figures of its internal structure. 
The specimen here described was 34 inches in length, compressed, beginning with 
a round obtuse head, widening gradually for the first inch, where it measured 3 lines in 
lateral diameter, and from this part regularly becoming narrower to the posterior ex- 
tremity, which ends obtusely, and is half a line in diameter. 
The whole body is invested with a smooth, transparent, rather firm or,crisp cuticle, 
which, from maceration, and probably slight decomposition, had become detached in 
the individual examined, leaving a considerable interval between it and the contracted 
cutis, or muscular parietes of the body. There are no marks of an annulate structure in 
this epidermis. The cutis is distinctly divided into segments, most of which, as in the 
Entozoa Cestoidea, are slightly imbricated, the anterior margin of each division being 
just overlapped by the posterior margin of the segment before it. This disposition is 
most distinct along the sides of the body, where the integument is thickest and most 
muscular ; while on the dorsal and ventral aspects the divisions are gradually lost ; and 
here the parietes are so thin and transparent as readily to permit the contained parts to 
be seen through them. The great difference between Linguatula and the Cestoidean 
worms, among which Chabert, on account of the outward resemblance, first ranked this 
species, obtains in the condition of the generative organs, which, instead of being as 
distinct and numerous as the segments, form one continuous system, extending from 
one end of the body to the other. From the Trematoda, in which order Rudolphi and 
Bremser still place this genus, Linguatula differs, in as much as both the generative and 
' The specimen escaped, as was supposed, from the cavity of the cranium of a Dog, but it had more pro- 
bably been lodged in the frontal sinus, in which situation this species is usually developed. 
® tom. iii. p. 254. 3 pp. 432, 577, 584, 593. 
‘ The figures given by Rudolphi (Hist. Ent., tab. xii. figg. 8—11.) show only so much of the internal struc- 
ture as is discernible through the integument. 
VOL. I. 2x 
