384 PARASITES OF ANIMALS 



out of the sixteen solipeds he examined during the plague. 

 Each horse showed from two to a dozen worms " in the peri- 

 toneal cavity, wandering free on the serous lining, without 

 causing any apparent mischief to the membrane." On one 

 occasion Sonsino found the worm in the liver. From the 

 similarity of habit there can be little doubt that the cases 

 of guinea- worm (F. medinensis) recorded by Clark son and 

 others, as occurring in the horse, were merely examples of 

 F. papillosa. I think so all the more because the lamented Fed- 

 schenko verbally expressed to me his astonishment that I had 

 in my introductory treatise (p. 387) spoken of the Dracunculus 

 as an equine parasite. I did so on the authority of others. 

 To the Rev. Horace Waller I am indebted for specimens of the 

 eye-worm brought from Assam, and to Mr Spooner Hart for 

 others sent from India. For examples occurring in England I 

 am indebted to Mr Hay don Leggett, who, in 1875, sent me 

 three specimens extracted from the eye of a five-year-old mare. 

 Mr Steel has also given me an example of F. papillosa taken 

 from the peritoneum of a donkey. Similar cases are constantly 

 occurring in the practice of veterinarians in Hindostan. Highly 

 interesting Indian cases are recorded by Kennedy, Molyneux, 

 Twining, and Breton, and in addition to these I may also par- 

 ticularise those of Macnamara, C. Percivall, Hickman, Clarkson, 

 Skeavington, and Jeaffreson. The cases by Lee and Grellier also 

 deserve attention. 



Another species of thread-worm (Filaria lacrymalis) is occa- 

 sionally found in the horse between the lids and eyeball. It is 

 a comparatively small and harmless parasite, the males measur- 

 ing J'' i n length and the females '' '. It also infests the ox. 

 Both the large and small eye-worms are viviparous, and, not 

 improbably, both of them are the means of conveying embryonic 

 Filariae into the circulation. Be this as it may, we owe to Dr 

 Sonsino the discovery of haematozoa in an Egyptian horse. 

 The larval worm was provisionally named by him Filaria san- 

 guinis equi. The microscopic nematodes closely resemble the 

 larvae of F. sanguirds hominis, but they are smaller. The horse 

 from whose blood Dr Sonsino obtained the minute worms was 

 also found, by post-mortem examination, to have been infested 

 by Filaria papillosa, a circumstance which naturally suggested 

 a genetic relation between the larval and adult parasites. 

 Similar, if not the same, microscopic worms had been previously 

 discovered by Wedl, who primarily and independently regarded 



