144 Mr. H. A. Baylis on 



VIII. — On Crassicauda crassicaiula [Crepl.) [Nematoda] 

 and its Hosts. By II. A. Baylis, B.A. 



(Published bj permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



Ox July 18tli, 1015, an exanijDle of the rare Ciivier's wliale 

 {Ziphius cavirostris^ was lound .stranded on the coast of 

 Ireland near the entrance to Bannow Bay, Co. Wexford. 

 This Avhale has recentlj' been reported u]»on by Dr. S. F. 

 Harmer*. During its dissection by members of the staff of 

 the British Museum, a portion of a Nematode worm was 

 found in the neighbourhood of the kidneys, having evidently 

 been pulled out of the renal tubules. This fragmentary 

 specimen was handed to me for examination, and proves to 

 be of interest on grounds which will be mentioned in this 

 paper. 



Although the specimen is incomplete, and I have been 

 unable to decide to which sex it belongs, it seems almost 

 certainly to be an example of the curious Fila7-ia-Vike form 

 originally described by Cieplin f in 1829, under the name of 

 Filaria crassicauda, and lattdy redescribed in part by Leiper 

 and Atkinson \, who have created for it the new genus 

 Crassicauda. 



There seems to be some doubt as to the species of whale 

 from which Creplin's original material was obtained. This 

 was a whale stranded on the island of RUgen, in the Baltic, 

 in 1825. According to the opinion of Rosenthal and Horns- 

 chuch §, who described the whale, it was of the same species 

 as the '"'' Balana minima seu rostraia'''' of Fabricius ||. This, 

 according to True ^, is in all jirobability the species now more 

 correctly known as JBahenoptera acuto-rostrata, Lacep. 

 Miinter **, however, who examined the skeleton of the same 

 specimen, refers it to the blue whale, Balcenoptera musculus, L. 

 [ = .B. sibbahlii, auctt., nee B. musculus^ auctt.]. Dr. S. F. 

 Harmer, who has kindly given me the benefit of his know- 



* Abstr. of Proceedings Zool. See. 1915, no. 148, p. 42. 



t Verb. d. K. Leop.-Carol. Ak. d. Naturf. xiv. 2 Abth. 1829, p. 873. 



\ ' Teri-a Nova ' Report, Zoology, vol. ii. no. 3, Parasitic Worms 

 (1015), p. 29. 



§ ' Epistiil.1 de Balcenopteris quibusdam ventre sulcato distinctis &c.,' 

 Grj'phiae, 1825. 



II O. Fabricius, ' Fauna Groenlaudica,' 1780, p. 40. 



% F. W. True, " On the Xoruenclature of the Whalebone Whales of 

 the Tenth Edition of Linnajus' 'Systems Naturae.'" Proc. U.S. Nat. 

 Mus. xxi. (1898) pp. Gl 7-635. 

 ** Mitth. naturwiss. Yer. Neu-Vorpommeni u. Rugen, ix. Jahrg. 1877 

 (Berlin), p. 1. 



