THE BURBOT 93 
but the burbot and the pike are the hosts of a peculiarly 
formidable parasitic worm, which causes great distress to human 
beings in those countries where it is the custom to eat these 
fish raw ; wherefore a brief notice of Bothriocephalus may not 
be deemed out of place. 
Bothriocephalus latus is one of those so-called worms, of 
which the tape-worm (Tenia) is the type, which, at certain 
stages, inhabit the intestines of vertebrate animals, and at other 
stages establish themselves in the muscles and other organs of 
the body, setting up serious disturbance and in extreme cases 
causing death. ‘The creature consists of what is called a head, 
but which is really nothing more than a mechanism of attachment, 
whence springs a rapidly-growing chain of joints. At first these 
joints are slender, but they gradually increase in size until, at a 
certain distance from the point of attachment, they develop 
sexual apparatus, and each joint becomes a complete individual, 
remaining, however, a link in the lengthening chain. ‘The total 
length of the chain, or colony, may be as much as twenty to 
thirty feet. This unlovely community lies at ease, absorbing 
nutriment from the food swallowed by its host, each joint or 
individual in the chain forming within itself a number of 
eggs, which, when ripe, are expelled, and, in order to fulfil 
their destiny, must pass, it is believed, into the water. There 
a free-swimming organism escapes from the egg, finds its way 
into a burbot or a pike, and lodges itself as a sexless bladder- 
worm in the muscles of the fish. There it awaits passively 
further development, which comes when the uncooked flesh 
of the fish is eaten by man, dog, or other animal, and each 
bladder-worm becomes the “head,” or anchor, of a new 
colony of the so-called worm. Luckily there exists some 
prejudice in this country against eating raw fish ; in certain 
parts of Scandinavia, Russia, and Central Europe, where the 
peasantry dispense with that precaution and eat pike and 
burbot uncooked, they suffer very considerably from this 
filthy parasite. 
