44 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



(Diesing), found by batterer, at Brazil in the stomach of Champa 

 nigra. 



The next animal examined was a Boa ; the rudimentary hind limbs 

 were carefully dissected and were composed of a tibia, two apophyses, 

 and an ungual phalanx. The stomach was empty, of a yellow colour, 

 lubricated with a very sticky mucus, and thrown into large thick folds 

 by longitudinal ruga?. In the right paries of the cavity was a firm tu- 

 mour, the size of a walnut, embedded in the coats of the stomach, be- 

 tween the mucous and muscular layers, and projecting inwards with a 

 convex prominence, from the apex of which were hanging out the pos- 

 terior parts of six Ascarides ; their anterior halves were lying loose 

 among the plaited folds ; most of these worms were five inches long, 

 some less than this ; they had their smooth pliant bodies, semi-diapha- 

 nous, of light brown colour ; the anterior half had a striated appearance 

 like an elastic bougie ; the posterior half was more transparent and was 

 packed with the filiform viscera of the animal. They moved briskly 

 three days after the stomach had been opened, which was probably a 

 week after the animal's death. A section of the tumour showed it to be 

 composed of an aggregation of numerous small yellow pellets, like gra- 

 nular fat or glandular structure, held together by areolar tissue ; it was 

 penetrated here and there by the tunnellings of the Ascarids. 



In 1837, at Pondicheny, M. Perrottet found worms in great num- 

 bers (which appear to be of the same kind as these), in a large serpent, 

 either a Boa or Python ; they occupied a kind of gelatinous cyst outside 

 the stomach, and Dujardin designates them Ascaris filarice.* Professor 

 Owen has publishedf an account of a very similar tumour in the pa- 

 rietes of the stomacb, and which was also the abode of Entozoa. The 

 stomach of a young Tiger (which died of rupture of the aorta), exhibited 

 on the interior or mucous surface what were considered to be scrofulous 

 tumours, five or six in number, of broad or oblong form, varying in size 

 from half an inch to two inches in the longest diameter, and the largest 

 of them projecting about half an inch from the plane of the inner sur- 

 face; they made no projection externally. On wiping away the tough 

 mucous secretion from the surface, two or three orifices presented them- 

 selves in the largest tumour, and these conducted to irregular sinuses 

 which were the nidi of two kinds of Nematoid Entozoa, some measuring 

 nearly an inch in length, the others more minute ; these tumours were 

 composed of condensed accumulated layers of submucous cellular tissue, 

 presenting a flat surface next the muscular coat, to wbich the larger tu- 

 mour firmly adhered, and projecting with a rounded convexity towards 

 the cavity of the stomach, where the sinuses opened and terminated. 

 They did not contain any of the caseous secretion characteristic of 

 struma, but were most probably caused by the irritation of the Entozoa. 



In the duodenum of this Boa, about two inches from the stomach, 



* " Hist, des Helmintlies," p. 653. 



f "Proc. Zool. Soc. Lund.," 1836, part iv., p. 123. 



