CESTODE AND NEMATODE PARASITES. 61 



" The first individual came from Puttalam Lake, opposite to Kalpitiya. 



" Samples from the stomach of the second specimen, taken from the open sea off 

 Dutch Bay, contained nothing but the broken shells and visceral masses of a small 

 thin-shelled Mactra, rayed with brown. 



" These fishes appear to be gregarious, going about in shoals of great numbers. 

 A reliable fish-curer has informed me that during the Pearl Fishery of 1889 a single 

 net, operated on the adjacent coast, took in a single haul 7,000 individuals. My 

 informant was certain as regards the number stated, as it was he himself who 

 purchased the entire catch. His men, even with additional help, took eight days to 

 complete the cutting up. To keep the fish till ready to cut up, the whole lot was 

 buried in trenches in the sand after being roughly eviscerated. Afterwards the men 

 started at one end and worked methodically through the trenches, one after the 

 other. The same year cholera broke out in the Pearl Fishery Camp in the vicinity 

 (Dutch Bay), and many of the ignorant natives traced the source of the epidemic 

 to this vast heap of fish, which no doubt gave off a strong fishy odour during curing 

 operations."* 



Echeneibothrium javanicum, n. sp. Plate IV., figs. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56. 



A collection of seven or eight of these Cestodes was taken from the spiral intestine 

 of a Rhinoptera javanica captured off Dutch Bay on January 21, 1905. 



The specimens are from 9 millims. to 12 millims. in length and about 0'5 millim. in 

 breadth at the broadest part, but the head, when the bothridia are bent out, is at 

 least 1 millim. across. 



The head is followed by a long neck which occupies from about one-third to near 

 one-half of the whole body length. It is in this particular alone that our specimens 

 depart from the diagnosis of the genus given by BRAUN in BRONN'S ' Thierreich.' His 

 description includes the words " Hals kurz oder fehlend." In our specimens the neck 

 is very long, very thin, and most clearly marked off both from the head and from the 

 body (Plate IV., fig. 52). 



The head consists of four pedunculated pad-like bothridia, somewhat triangular 

 in shape. Each is traversed by two longitudinal and a number of transverse ridges, 

 separating the surface into a number of areolas (Plate IV., fig. 54). One of these 

 is apical. At the base of each bothridium there are seven areolas, and these are 

 followed by three rows of seven, the central row being ended by the apical areola 

 (Plate IV., fig. 54) ; the disposition of the areolas is easily understood by a reference 

 to the figures. The bases of the four bothridia fuse together and so form the head, 

 but there is no extension forward of any central portion. There is no myzorhyiichus, 

 and the bothridia can be widely divaricated, as fig. 52, drawn from the life, shows. 

 Internally the head contains the nervous system, which consists of a transverse 

 ganglion, runs at each side into the lateral nerve-cord, a plexus of water vascular 



* This quotation is from Mr. HORNELL'S notes. 



