Miscellaneous. aoe 
which is almost completely filled with a prodigious quantity of spores. 
The latter are ovoid and refringent, with a large vacuole at the 
swollen extremity. On being treated with iodine water they 
exhibit a filament fifteen or twenty times longer than themselves, 
which issues from their pointed extremity or summit. Here we 
have indeed the special characters of the spores of the Myxosporidia, 
and the presence of a single filament—analogous to that of which 
the lamented M. Thélchan was the first to succeed in demonstrating 
the existence in the case of Glugea bombycis—causes us to assign 
this parasite to the family Glugeide. 
The spores are of two different dimensions—the small ones 
measuring 4 yz to 5 pw, the large about 8 px. Certain sacs contain 
only microspores, and the latter are always united in little groups 
of eight and enclosed in a frail wall; the others, on the contrary, 
contain only macrospores, and in this case the latter are united 
into spherical masses of different sizes, enclosing an indefinite 
number of spores, and likewise clothed with a delicate envelope. 
Together with these masses of spores we meet with the different 
phases of development of the primitive spherules— that is to say, of 
the spherical masses of granular protoplasm with one, two, four, 
eight nuclei, and so on, showing the different stages in the forma- 
tion of the spores. 
The characters of this Myxosporidian place it in the genus Glugea 
by the side of the other species studied by Thélohan and formerly 
included in the group Microsporidia. It is distinguished from the 
forms at present known—(1) by its habitat being exclusively con- 
fined to the body-cavity, without relations with the alimentary 
canal at maturity or with the other organs which always remain 
intact; (2) by the faculty it possesses of appearing sometimes in 
the form of cysts with an indeterminate number of macrospores, 
and sometimes in the condition of cysts enclosing only eight micro- 
spores, which shows that these two states are far from having 
the specific importance attached to them at present. 
I shall designate the species Glugea varians, in order to recall 
this latter peculiarity. 
When this Myxosporidian appears, as is most frequently the case, 
in the form of cysts containing eight spores, one cannot help noticing 
its striking analogy to T'elohania Contejeant, Henneguy, which com- 
pletely invades the muscles of the crayfish and causes the death of 
this crustacean. 
As I thought that there might be some relation between these 
two parasites, especially considering the fact that the Simulium- 
larvee are frequently met with in the streams inhabited by crayfish, 
I attempted, in collaboration with Dr. Hagenmiiller, to infest cray- 
fish artificially by causing them to consume infected larvee. Hitherto 
our experiments have not yielded positive results. Perhaps the 
spores only recover their virulence provided they pass into the 
intestine of a vertebrate, as Krassilschtchik maintains in the case 
ot the Glugea of the Bombyx. We shall attempt to verify this 
subsequently.— Comptes Rendus, t. cxxv. no. 4 (July 26, 1897), 
pp. 260-262. 
