338 OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



almost as small as a hair near the creature's head, 

 then broadening little by little and attaining the 

 width of a centimeter ; picture to yourself the entire 

 length of the creature divided into sections or joints, 

 some square, others oblong, placed end to end like 

 the beads of a chaplet, or, better, like pumpkin seeds 

 strung one after another, and you will have a suffi- 

 ciently good idea of the tsenia or tape-worm. 



"The number of these joints is sometimes as many 

 as a thousand, and, what is more, new ones are al- 

 ways forming, for the taenia has the singular faculty 

 of producing them indefinitely in a row, each one 

 growing out of the preceding. All are full of eggs, 

 detestable seed of the original malady in the pig, and 

 then of the tape-worm in man. The terminal sec- 

 tions or joints, the oldest and ripest, become de- 

 tached from time to time in chaplets and are ex- 

 pelled. Any pig nosing about in the excrement con- 

 taining them is pretty sure to become infected from 

 the eggs contained in these joints, for each one is the 

 germ of a hydatid. These eggs will hatch in the 

 animal's intestines; and, as soon as hatched, the 

 young worms, opening a passage for themselves here 

 and there with their crown of hooks, will go and 

 lodge wherever they please, some in the lean flesh, 

 some in the fat, there to encase themselves in a re- 

 sistant shell, a cell built out of the pig's substance, 

 and there they will await the moment favorable for 

 their emigration to the human body. 



"These frequent losses in chaplets of discarded 

 sections do not in the least impair the tape-worm's 



