MiaceUaneous. 557 



which \» almost completely filled with a prodigious quantity of spores. 

 The latter are ovoid and refriiigeiit, witli a largo vacuole at the 

 swollen extremity. Uu being treated with iodine water they 

 exhibit a tihunent til'teen or twenty times longer than themselves, 

 •which issues from their pointed extremity or summit. Here we 

 have indeed the special characters of the spores of the Myxosporidia, 

 and the presence of a single filament — analogous to that of which 

 the lamented M. Tlielohan was the tirst to succeed in demonstrating 

 the existence in the case of Glugea hombycis — causes us to assign 

 this jtara-vite to the family (jlugeidtc. 



The spores are of two different dimensions — the small ones 

 measuring 4 ^i to 5 ^i, the largo about 8 /j. Certain sacs contain 

 only microspores, and the latter are always united in little groups 

 of eight and enclosed in a frail wall ; the others, on the contrary, 

 contain only macrospores, and in this case the latter are united 

 into spherical masses of different sizes, enclosing an indefinite 

 number of spores, and likewise clothed with a delicate envelope. 

 Together with these masses of spores wo meet with the different 

 phases of development of the primitive spherules— that is to say, of 

 the spherical masses of granular protoplasm with one, two, four, 

 eight nuclei, and so on, showing the different stages in the forma- 

 tion of the spores. 



The characters of this Myxosporidian place it in the genus Glugea 

 by the side of the other species studied by Tlielohan and formerly 

 included in the group Microsporidia, It is distinguished from the 

 forms at present known — (1) by its habitat being exclusively con- 

 fined to the body-cavity, without relations with the alimentary 

 canal at maturity or with the other organs which always remain 

 intact ; (2) by the faculty it possesses of appearing sometimes in 

 the form of cysts with an indeteituinate number of macrospores, 

 and sometimes in the condition of cysts enclosing only eight micro- 

 spores, which shows that these two states are far from having 

 the specific importance attached to them at present. 



I shall designate the species Glur/ea varians, in order to recall 

 this latter peculiarity. 



"When this Myxosporidian appears, as is most frequently the case, 

 in the form of cysts containing eight spores, one cannot help noticing 

 its striking analogy to Telohania Contejeani, Henneguy, which com- 

 pletely invades the muscles of the crayfish and causes the death of 

 this crustacean. 



As I thought that there might be some relation between these 

 two parasites, especially considering the fact that the Simulium- 

 larvje are frequently met with in the streams inhabited by crayfish, 

 1 attempted, in collaboration with Dr. Hagenmiiller, to infest cray- 

 fish artificially by causing them to consume infected larvae. Hitherto 

 our experiments have not yielded positive results. Perhaps the 

 spores only recover their virulence provided they pass into the 

 intestine of a vertebrate, as Krassilschtchik maintains in the case 

 of the Glugea of the Bomhyx. We shall attempt to verify this 

 subsequently. — Comjite^ Rendus, t. cxxv. no. 4 (July 26, 1897), 

 pp. 260-262. 



