390 ANIMAL PAEASITES. 



quia ob minorem magnitudinem minores efficiunt et molestias et 

 dolores et vix unquam majores tumor es ; sed, uti Diesingius ipse 

 enurrat, a Clellandio in ' Calcutta Journ. of Nat. Hist/ i, 359, 

 PI. X, fig. 1, delineati. 



FemiacP : corpore longissimo [ad 3 ulnas et aliquid supra) 

 subalbo, filiformi, subcequali, secundum Dujardinuni antrorsum, sed 

 secundum Diesingiurn, et quidem, quod ipse affirmare jjossum., 

 retrorsum seusim attenuato, ad V" seu ad 1 — 2i mill, lato ; ore 

 orbiculari, spinulis 4 cruciatim oppositis ; caudd ad apicem 

 uncinata, subacuta, in apice 0*065 — 0082 mill. = 00.28 — O^OSG"' 

 Par. : = 029 — G'037"' V. lata, inter dum in vermis ipshts cute 

 ita ajjixd, ut vix apicem liberum facere possis ; vagina ; ovu/is ; 

 embryonibus 1" longis, vix \'" latis. Species vivipara. 



The Filaria medinensis, which was first placed by Gmeliu 

 amongst the true Helmintha, was first mentioned, according to 

 the usual statements of authors, by the geographer and philosopher 

 Agatharchides of Cnidus, who was the teacher of Ptolemseus 

 Alexander. It is to him, at least, that Plutarch refers in the 

 ninth question of the eighth book of his ' Symposiacon' (Table- 

 talk) where he makes him narrate " that the people taken ill on 

 the Red Sea suffered from many strange and unheard-of attacks, 

 amongst other worms, like little snakes, Spa/covrta jlukou (in the 

 edition of which I make use, it says only • amongst others little 

 snakes') came out upon them, which gnawed away their legs and 

 arms, and when touched again retracted themselves, coiled them- 

 selves up in the muscles, and there gave rise to the most 

 insupportable pains ; but that this evil has only been found then, 

 and neither before nor since amongst any other people." In this 

 description the addition that the evil never occurred amongst any 

 other people is especially accidental, and is certainly an addition 

 of Plutarch's, who lived at a period in which the intercourse 

 of the Greeks with the East, and especially with its more remote 

 regions and the coasts of the Red Sea was so rare that the 

 Greeks never came in contact with the countries in which the 

 worm is endemic, and consequently could neither see patients of 

 the kind in these countries themselves, nor the worm brought 

 into Greece by those who had visited those regions. Moreover, 

 it is not clear, as only fragments of Agatharchides are extant, 

 whether he had himself visited those regions and seen the disease 

 or had only obtained a knowledge of it by hearsay in Egypt, on 



