whose work on parasites this brief history was taken, has made 

 some observations on this worm. In 1879, Lord Walsingham, 

 of England, offered a prize of two hundred and fifty dollars, to 

 be awarded by the Council of the Entomolpgical Society of Lon- 

 don, for the best essay, comprising a complete life history of 

 the parasite causing the gapes. Mr. Charles Black and Dr. 

 Pierre Megnin, a well-known French scientist, competed for the 

 prize. The latter received the award. The conclusions at which 

 he arrived in regard to the propagation of the disease are as fol- 

 lows: First, that birds pick up mature Syn garni filled with eggs, 

 which are coughed out by those having the disease, or the eggs 

 are taken in their food, or the embryos after they are hatched in 

 water, and they are developed within them to the perfect form. 

 Second, that no intermediate host, as perfect insects, larvae, mol- 

 lusks, or any other living agent, has any share in spreading the 

 disease. In a supplement to the above, after discovering a 

 nymph of Syngamus in the pulmonary tissue of a red partridge, 

 he says: "In the preceding memoir, written about twenty months 

 ago, we pointed out that the eggs ejected during the coughing 

 fits hatch in the water, and that the embryo, resembling an 

 anguillula, may live in this medium for many months, because 

 we have kept some alive almost a year, in a low temperature. 

 The birds are infected by drinking the water containing these 

 embryos. But how are they developed in the body of birds, 

 and in what way do they reach the trachea, where they are found 

 in the adult stage, fixed to the mucous membrane, like leeches, 

 the two sexes united in a permanent manner, and the females 

 crowded with eggs?" He closes the supplement as follows: 

 "This discovery of the nymph enables us to say that all the 

 developmental phases of Syngamus trachealis are now known. 

 The only two media which this parasite inhabits during its entire 

 existence are the water or moist earth during its embryonal con- 

 dition, and the respiratory organs of its victim during its nymphal 

 and its adult phase. It is developed without the aid of any other 

 medium than the water, corresponding in this respect to the im- 

 mense majority of verminous parasites." This, then, is the con- 

 clusion at which Dr. Megnin arrives, after five or six years' study 

 of the gapes in the various pheasantries of Central France, and 

 around Paris. Dr. Cobbold says, in his work on "Parasites," 

 page 445: "A change of hosts is probably necessary, but in the 

 first instance they either enter the substance of fungi or other 



