398 PARASITES OF ANIMALS 



When describing the parasites of the horse (p. 358), I spoke 

 of Collins' amphistome from that animal, but in the letter 

 addressed to me from Simla, 22nd March, 1875, Mr. Collins made 

 no allusion to the earth-eating habit. He wrote : " I forward 

 you by this mail parasites found in the colon of a horse that 

 died, a subject of fever peculiar to this country. There were about 

 a thousand of the parasites, and nearly the whole of them were 

 situated close to the caecum, and were loose in the gut. Not 

 having seen parasites at all similar to these, I have forwarded 

 them for identification. They were of a brick-red color when 

 first obtained." These explicit statements by Mr Collins are 

 interesting from many points of view. One has only to place 

 his specimens side by side with those from the elephant in 

 order to satisfy one's self that the two forms are distinct. For 

 the reasons already stated I provisionally called the worm 

 Amphistoma Gollinsii. It is probable that other veterinary 

 surgeons have encountered this entozoon in India ; but, unless 

 they can point to some published account of the fact, Mr Col- 

 lins is entitled to be considered as its discoverer. Doubtless 

 many other European residents in India, Ceylon, and Burmah, 

 must, like Dr Gilchrist, be well acquainted with the masuri as 

 such, though unaware of their zoological position. 



In a record of the post-mortem examination of one of the 

 victims of the Secunderabad epizooty, the veterinary surgeon 

 said : " No doubt disease of the lungs and subacute inflamma- 

 tion of the bowels were the immediate cause of death, but the 

 large number of flukes in the liver and the intestinal parasites 

 (i. e. the amphistomes) account in a great measure for some of 

 the symptoms shown, and these symptoms accord in many 

 respects with those shown in elephants that died in Burmah 

 during the epizooty (rot) in 1867, as recorded by R. B., no- 

 tably, refusal of food, standing with mouth open, restlessness, 

 and puffiness about the head and shoulders. The liver para- 

 site is no doubt the same referred to by R. B., and is that 

 termed by Dr Cobbold Fasciola Jacksoni." In reference to a 

 later case the same officer remarks : " I carried out the post- 

 mortem examination with special reference to inquiry as to the 

 probability of the mortality amongst elephants at this station 

 being of parasitic origin. This was suggested to me by the 

 former case. The post-mortem appearances differed in every 

 respect. There were flukes in the liver, but in no great 

 quantity, and the structure of the liver was sound. Although 



