OXYURIS VEKMICULAEIS. 369 



sent the bottle filled with it to me, with the observation that I 

 should find a sufficient number of males therein, together with 

 mature and semi-mature females. In this fluid, both M. Reinhardt, 

 of Bautzen, to whom I sent some of it, and myself, have obtained 

 an abundant harvest (at least from forty to fifty) as regards the 

 males, so that the old notion, diffused by many a text-book, 

 as to the rarity of the male Oxyurides, is to be regarded as com- 

 pletely set aside by Zenker's means. Even with the naked eye, 

 but still better with the lens, we may, according to Zenker, and 

 as I can confirm, detect the males in the form of small, trans- 

 lucent filaments or curls, when the diarrhoeal fseces and mucus, 

 spread upon a glass plate, are held up against the light. They 

 vary greatly in size. The addition of water is not advisable, as 

 they then easily burst, and suffer a prolapsus of the intestines. 

 In the male generative apparatus we perceive, 



1. A simple seminigenous organ, in which particular parts can 

 hardly be distinguished from one another, and which forms a 

 canal of almost continuously equal calibre. The blind extremity 

 of this organ, which would correspond with the testis, commences 

 at the inner side of the worm, about in the posterior or middle 

 third, and rises here in the space between the skin and the 

 intestinal canal upwards to the level of the bulb of the 

 oesophagus, bends round it, passes over towards the other side 

 of the worm, and runs down a little on the other side of the 

 stomach, on the outer side of the worm, between the skin and the 

 intestine, towards the hinder extremity. Here it opens on the 

 inner side of the tail, immediately beside, perhaps even together 

 with, the anus. At its lowest extremity we find 



2. The so-called penis, which is simple, and in which the bands 

 described in the Trichocephali passing to the sheath, as well as 

 the sheath itself, are wanting. The penis has a funnel-shaped or 

 button-like swelled root, and then presents a tubular part, running 

 pretty straight, and at its hinder extremity a small, hook-shaped, 

 obtuse point, the concavity of which always looks towards the 

 side which is turned away from the intestine, and therefore 

 towards that indicated at the inner side of the worm. 

 Moreover, the penis, which is imperforate, and only hollowed 

 out into a channel, acts like the penis of the other Nematoida, as 

 a sort of ovipositor. In the interior of the seminiferous organ, 

 and escaping through the posterior genital orifice by the agency 

 of the penis, are seen 



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