T^.NTA SOLITTM. 209 



the measles as provender to other animals, and of studying the 

 changes which took place in the alimentary canal of the quadrupeds 

 thus fed. Such a trial might, it is true, very naturally suggest 

 itself to any one, but this does not lessen the merit due to Kiichen- 

 meister, seeing that the result was thoroughly decisive." These 

 experiments gave a new impulse to the study of helminthology, 

 which was now pursued with avidity by several workers co-operat- 

 ing with Kiichenmeister, and also by others acting independently, 

 amongst the more prominent of whom one may especially particu- 

 larize Van Beneden of Louvain and Leuckart of Giessen. 



From the very nature of the experimental method adopted, it 

 was easy to perceive that occasional errors of interpretation would 

 be liable to occur, even in the minds of those who had enjoyed con- 

 siderable experience in helminthological pursuits conducted after 

 the fashion pursued and systematized by Rudolphi. Von Siebold 

 especially erred in this manner, disputing Kiichenmeister' s well- 

 ascertained results, and throwing down a gauntlet which in later 

 times has been taken up by others. Thus, not long ago, MM. 

 Pouchet and Yerrier gave a general denial to the opinions of expe- 

 rimental parasitologists respecting the development of tapeworms 

 from Gysticerci. Those who have read the statement, as presented 

 in the " Comptes Hendus" (for May 6th, 1862, p. 958), or the 

 translation of it given in the July number of the " Annals of Natu- 

 ral History" (3rd series, vol. x. p. 77, et seq.), will at once perceive 

 the causes which have led these gentlemen to form conclusions at 

 variance with the experience of at least nine-tenths of the leading 

 helminthologists of the day. As Professor Yan Beneden remarks, 

 they err greatly in supposing that any one regards the Goenurus of 

 the sheep as the larva of Taenia serrafa of the dog, seeing that 

 nearly all Continental experimentalists, following Kiichenmeister, 

 have maintained that the scolex condition of this last-named tape- 

 worm is unquestionably the Gysticercns pisiformis of hares and 

 rabbits. The researches of Leuckart are especially conclusive on 

 this point ; and my own experiments at Edinburgh in 1856, together 



E E 



