83 M. Sars on an Intestinal Worm in an Acaleph. 
more abundant would be detected.. And if the naturalist be al- 
lowed to assume, that in the existing creation, “ within and_be- 
neath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man is able to 
explore, there may be a world of invisible beings; and that could 
we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds them from 
our senses, we should behold a theatre of as many wonders as 
astronomy can unfold,—a universe within the compass of a point 
so small as to elude all the powers of the microscope,’—surely 
the geologist may be permitted to conclude, that a large propor- 
tion of the sedimentary strata, which at present appears to con- 
sist of amorphous particles of lime, of flint, and of iron, may be 
the aggregated skeletons of beings yet more infinitesimal than 
those which have formed the subject of the present communica- 
tion. 
19 Chester Square, Pimlico, May 1845. 
VIII.—On the Occurrence of an Intestinal Worm in an Acaleph. 
By M. Sars*. 
[ With a Plate. ] 
In Wiegmann’s Archiv,’ vol. u. p. 822, 1841 (Annals, vol. i. 
p-148), it is stated that a parasitical worm resembling a Mlaria 
had been discovered by Prof. EK. Forbes im a species of Cydippe, 
and subsequently (vol. u. p. 870, 1842), that this parasite, which 
attaches itself by means of four suckers to the walls of the stomach 
or vessels, had been described by Messrs. Forbes and Goodsir 
under the name of Tetrastoma Playfair. The reporter adds, that 
further observation would be of interest, as hitherto no intestinal 
worms had been met with in the Meduse. 
The reporter had forgotten that the discovery of an intestinal 
worm in an Acaleph had been published by me already in the 
year 1837. (See Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1837, vol. vil. p. 247.) 
It is not to claim any priority as to this discovery, which is a 
matter of perfect mdifference to science, that I return to this 
subject, but merely to communicate the following short notices 
written down in 1835, which I have hitherto kept back on ac- 
count of their imperfect state, in the hope, unfortunately hitherto. 
delusive, of completing them by further observations, 
It was on a gigantic individual of my Mnemia norwegica, five 
inches in length, which I caught on the 4th of November 1835, 
near the island Florée, that I observed, within the transparent clear 
body, from ten to twelve longish opake white bodies of about a 
line in length, which proved, on closer examination, to be intes- 
* Translated from Wiegmann’s Archiv, 1845, part 1. 
7 
