174 Mr. F. J. Bell on Pentastomum polyzonum. 



be conclusive as to the point that the credit of first describing 

 and naming this species belongs to Alexander von Humboldt*. 

 At any rate I am quite certain that there is no justification at 

 all to be found for the name adopted by M. Megnin in his 

 just published and valuable handbook on parasites f ; for 

 the name of moniliforme was not given by Diesing till the 

 year 1836, and was then given to what is either a very well- 

 marked variety of P. proboscideum, Rud., or, as is more pro- 

 bable, and as Leuckart { imagines, a species distinct from 

 that more common form. 



The peculiarly unsatisfactory representation of the creature 

 given by M. Megnin, is not obscure as to one point only, 

 the moniliform character ^ of the example figured (t. c. 

 fig. 62, a) ; so far, however, as a judgment on this point can 

 be given from the specimens of this species which already 

 exist in the national collection, and which were named by 

 no less eminent a zoologist than the late accomplished Dr. 

 Baird, it seems pretty certain that this moniliform appearance 

 is an unusual and not a typical occurrence among examples 

 of this Ophidian entozoon. 



P. teretiusculum, Baird §, is one of the few species described 

 since the publication of Leuckart's essay ; but it is quite dis- 

 tinct from the creature now under investigation. 



P. annulatum, from the Egyptian cobra (Naja hqje), was 

 described and figured by Dr. Baird in 1853 || ; but it is not 

 mentioned in the synopsis of species which concludes Leuc- 

 kart's essay (1860) ^f. Unfortunately it does not form a por- 

 tion of the national collection ; and it is impossible to say 

 whether, with the twenty-eight rings with which Dr. Baird 

 credits it, the length should be stated at 2j inches or at 3**. 



In the year 1857 Dr. George Harley read before the Zoo- 

 logical Society a paper entitled " On the Anatomy of a new 

 Species of Pentastoma found in the Lung and Air-sac of an 

 Egyptian Cobra." This cobra was the " Naja h.aje;" and 



* See Humboldt and Bonpland, Voyage, ii. 1, p. 301. 



t Les Parasites et les maladies parasitaires (Paris, 1880). 



% Bau u. Entw. der Pentastomen, p. 154. 



§ P. Z. S. 1862, p. 114. 



|| P. Z. S. 1853, p. 22. 



^[ I fancy Dr. Baird's work must have been unknown to Prof. Leuckart; 

 for I find no reference to P. megacephalum, described in the same 

 paper and figured in the Museum catalogue of Entozoa by Dr. Baird 

 (1853). 



** The latter statement as to its length was made by Dr. Edwards Crisp 

 in what appears to have been a verbal communication to the Zoological 

 Society (P. Z. S. 1853, p. 68) ; the type seems to have been in the posses- 

 sion of the Society, and to have passed, on the dispersal of their museum, 

 into the hands of the naturalist just named, 



