QUARTERLY CHRONICLE. 97 
connection with the cause of the disease. Before proceeding 
any further, however, we must at once state that they have 
nothing whatever to do with it, as a cause; the interest 
attached to them is, nevertheless, very great to the zoologist, 
since the study of them promises to add some valuable facts 
to the knowledge we at present possess of that most interest- 
ing group of Protozoa—the Gregarine. The bodies observed 
in the flesh of oxen are described by Dr. Lionel Beale, who 
has carefully examined them,as elongated spindle-shaped sacs, 
containing granular reniform bodies arranged horizontally, 
and apparently capable of multiplying by division. The in- 
vesting sac is covered with minute, motionless, hair-like bodies. 
No nucleus is present in the sac; but the reniform granular 
masses are stated by Dr. Cobbold to possess nucleoli. The 
structure thus presented is not far removed from that of 
many Gregarine, particularly of the larger individuals occur- 
ring in the earthworm, though the hair-like processes some- 
times observable on these are considered as extraneous by Dr. 
Lieberkiihn.* The compacted reniform masses may be con- 
sidered as the results of a process of segmentation, similar to 
that by which the pseudo-naviculee are formed. The bodics 
thus described are by no means peculiar to diseased cattle; 
they are met with in the healthy muscles of the ox, sheep, 
pig, deer, rat, mouse, mole, and perhaps other animals. Dr. 
Cobbold, in an article in the ‘ Lancet,’ gives an excellent 
résumé of the case. 
Miescher, in 1843, described such bodies from the muscles 
of a mouse, and a very good account of them, obtained from 
the muscles of a pig, is given by Mr. Rainey in the ‘ Philo- 
sophical Transactions’ for 1857, though he erroneously 
regarded them as the young stage of cestode entozoa. They 
have been described under a variety of titles, such as worm- 
nodules, egg-sacs, eggs of the fluke, young measles, corpuscles 
produced by muscular degeneration, &c. When considered in 
connection with the minute cysts described by Gubler, 
Virchow, and Dressler, from the human liver, they have an 
especial interest ; and the observations of Lindemann on the 
psorospermial sacs obtained from the hair of a peasant at 
Nischney-Novgorod, and in the kidneys of a patient who died 
from Bright’s disease, bear very strongly on the nature of 
these bodies. The people of Novgorod are believed to get 
these parasites from washing in water in which Gregarine 
abound. The most interesting inquiry which is placed before 
us by these various facts is whether, as Professor Leuckart 
* See our last ‘‘ Chronicle.” 
