231 



Art. LXIX. — Varieties. 



152. Enquiry respecting the Parasite on the Goldfish, (Pliytol. 190). In the last 

 No. of ' The Phytologist' there is a notice of a paper read by Mr. Goodsir on the 1 1th 

 of January last, at a meeting of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, on a vegetable 

 found on the gills and fins of a goldfish. Although Mr. Goodsir " gave a minute de- 

 scription of the parasite, explaining practically its form, structure, mode of fructifica- 

 tion, &c." you have not even favoured your readers with the name of the vegetable, or 

 given the slightest account of it. This I very much regret, as a friend of mine a few 

 weeks since sent me a small carp, which he had kept in a pond, and which, it would 

 appear, died from the same disease as that mentioned by Mr. Goodsir. We examined 

 this fish, and found it covered with a minute vegetable substance, which we supposed 

 to be a Conferva. Around the operculum it was very thick, and apparently obstruct- 

 ed the opening of this valve ; the gills too were very much ulcerated and almost unit- 

 ed into one mass by the parasitic covering. The internal organs were also inflamed, 

 and near the heart we found a transparent mass, filled with a fluid, and which we con- 

 ceived to be a hydatid. — Hy. Jno. Turner; 47, Lower Stamford St., Blackfriars Road, 

 April, 1842. 



[Our notice of Mr. Goodsir's paper was given verbatim from the report published 

 in the Edinburgh Evening Post. We cannot learn that the parasite has yet received 

 a name, and the only description we can meet with we have given below ; it is from a 

 report in Taylor's 'Annals ' of the February meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

 Mr. John Quekett has obligingly furnished us with a notice of a very interesting fact 

 observed by him in connexion with this parasite, which we have great pleasure in in- 

 serting. — Ed."] 



153. Description of the Vegetable parasitic on the Goldfish. " The concluding 

 part of Dr. J. H. Bennet's paper on Parasitic Fungi growing on living animals was 

 read, and as portions of it bear dii'ectly on Natural History, we shall briefly allude to 

 these. Fungi of this description have previously been noted as occuning in the stic- 

 kleback and common carp, but we are not aware that any particular description has 

 yet been supplied of these fungi. Dr. Bennet had an opportunity of examining them 

 upon the gold carp, Cyprinus auratus, having been persistent before death. To the 

 eye they presented the appearance of a white cottony or flocculent matter attached to 

 the animal. Under the microscope it presented two distinct structures, which were 

 severally cellular and non-cellular. The former consisted of long tubes divided into 

 elongated cells by distinct partitions. At the proximal end of several of these cells 

 was a transparent vesicle about "01 of a millimetre in diameter, which the author con- 

 sidered to be a nucleus. Some of the cells were filled with a granular matter ; others 

 however were empty, the granules having escaped through a rupture of the tube or of 

 the cellular walls. Besides these there were long filaments about "OG of a millimetre 

 in diameter, which apparently sprung from the sides of the cellular tubes. They were 

 uniform in size throughout their whole length, and were formed of an external deli- 

 cate diaphanous sheath, and an internal more solid transparent matter. This vegeta- 

 ble structure sprung from a finely granular amorphous mass. Fungi of a similar kind 

 were also found in the lungs of a man who died of pulmonary consumption, and from 

 whose lungs they were also copiously discharged in the expectoration during life. The 

 vegetable structure in this instance consisted of tubes, jointed at regular intervals, and 



