76 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



Just as in Leuckart's example of the brood of the frog, we 

 should have to speak of straying only when such cestoid scolices 

 reached a suitable intestine at a time when they had not yet 

 perfectly developed hooks and suckers. With these I could 

 never rear mature Tamice. In this case those cystic worms 

 which hiive arrived in their normal position would have to be 

 denominated strayed, because the animal infested by them was 

 destroyed by a predaceous animal before they had become so far 

 developed that on being placed in favorable conditions they were 

 capable of a higher development. 



A deformity (or, as it might be called, a morphological degene- 

 ration,) must also be referred to here, and again amongst the 

 Tanios ; I mean the scolices of tape-worms which instead of four, 

 possess six suckers, and when they are armed bear a propor- 

 tionately larger number of hooks than the greatest number pos- 

 sessed by other creatures of their species, and which also, 

 when in the mature form, constitute triangular instead of flat 

 colonies [strobiles). Thus, according to epistolary communica- 

 tions, Rokitansky has seen a Cyst, celluloses of the human subject 

 which bore six suckers ; and I have indicated that it would be 

 of great importance for the proof of the conversion of cystic 

 worms into Taeniae, if we were to seek for such deformities in 

 Coenuri, and administer them to dogs, in which I have twice 

 accidentally found triangular T. caenurus after the administration 

 of the scolices. From the triangular Taenia, if any, we should 

 again endeavour to rear Coenuri, and in this way we should at the 

 same time obtain an enlarged knowledge of the laws of here- 

 ditary characters in the animal kingdom. To speak in Von 

 Siebold's sense of a degeneration of all cystic worms is cer- 

 tainly unjustifiable. The only degenerated forms are those above 

 mentioned, those with morbid deposits in the walls of the vesicle 

 [Cyst, tenuicollis) , and sterile acephalocysts. Or some day we 

 may make use of this expression for all cystic worms, if we 

 can discover the individual worms in great quantities and con- 

 diction of our primary law that the animal infested by cystic worms is the regular, or 

 perhaps also only the exceptional prey of that infested by the Tcenim, and even man, 

 as a bearer of cystic worms, may infect other predaceous animals with Tcenice. The 

 dignity of human nature and the laws of civilisation must consent to allow themselves 

 to rank below the universal laws of Nature ; and, when we regard the individual beings 

 in their general relations to the Creation, only make their appearance in the second 

 place. 



