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the question of injury to any fish or other aquatic host is 

 in no way bound up with the mature condition of the 

 parasites themselves. I mean to say that a parasite may, 

 under certain circumstances, prove dangerous at any stage 

 of its life. Now, in the case of fish, it happens that imper- 

 fectly-grown tapeworms are more mischievous than the 

 adult parasites. The ligules infesting our fresh-water fish 

 have received different specific names, but most of them 

 are referable to one and the same cestode. The Ligula 

 simplicissima of the minnow is the same as the Lig. tincce 

 of the tench, and as the Lig. abdominalis of the roach and 

 other species belonging to the genus Leuciscus. It is also 

 a mere synonym of a dozen other differently-named ligules 

 found in the carp, pike, perch, bream, goby, char, and so 

 forth. Of especial interest is the fact that this entozoon is 

 sometimes described as Ligula eduiis, referring to the cir- 

 cumstance that it is an edible parasite. More than half a 

 century back Rudolphi remarked that ligules were eaten in 

 Italy, and his words lead one to suppose that they were 

 regarded not only as great delicacies, but were freely eaten 

 under the name of macaroni piatti. In my recent account 

 of a ligule infesting the human body (L. Mansoni}, read 

 to the Linnean Society, I have referred to Rudolphi's 

 original words, which have also been freely quoted by 

 Diesmg, Duchamp, and other helminthologists. Thinking 

 that possibly there might be some mistake in our interpre- 

 tation of the passage in question, I have, within the last few 

 days, sought to ascertain on what authority Rudolphi based 

 his remarks. Thus in Ferrusac's 'Bulletin des Sciences 

 Naturelles ' for 1828 I found an abstract of a Paper by 

 Briganti in which it is stated that the entozoa received the 

 name of Ligula eduiis "because certain persons eat it 

 fried with the fish, regarding it as a kind of fat of the 



