FOOT (A. W.) — NOTES ON THE DISSECTION OF SOME ANIMALS. 45 



were found a pair of grey cestoid worms, firmly attached to the villous 

 coat of the intestine, within one inch of each other ; one worm was fif- 

 teen inches long, the other nineteen ; the heads were partially quadran- 

 gular, composed of two lateral oval prominences, hollow within, sepa- 

 rated by a groove, having each an anterior and posterior orifice. There 

 was a very slight constriction behind tbe head, but no distinct neck ; 

 the part of the body immediately below the head was narrower than 

 lower down, and the transverse markings were exceedingly fine ; the 

 joints and segments were very close, and arranged like the leaves of a 

 book, at a very acute angle with the long axis. The genital pores in the 

 mature part of the worm were situated along the centre of the anterior 

 or ventral face, and were two in number on each segment. The superior 

 of the two pores was concealed by the imbrication of the preceding seg- 

 ment, but brought into view when the adjacent articulation was drawn 

 away. The anterior orifices of the head of the worm had the villi of 

 the intestine so firmly grasped, that the worm would have been torn 

 across, had attempts been made to detach it, and it still keeps its hold 

 since put up in spirits of wine. This worm is one which resides in the 

 intestine of the Boa and Python, and has been described under at least 

 five names ; this has arisen from the anxiety of each person under 

 whose notice it came, to designate it by some term significant of one or 

 more of its peculiarities. It is a rare worm ; for, on the one hand, in 

 these countries opportunities of examining the animals it inhabits are 

 not very frequently obtained, and, on the other hand, helminthology is 

 not much cultivated in tbe Tropics and "West Indies. 



In 1823, the Genus Bothridium was established by M. de Blainville, 

 for a worm of this kind, found in a Python, and he gave it this name 

 from the structure of the cephalic swelling, which, instead of the wide 

 lateral suctorial fossae, or (iodpia, of the Bothriocephali, contains two tu- 

 bular cavities, formed, as it were, by the closure of the lips of these 

 lothria, or pits, by which the adhesion to the intestine is effected. 



Eetzius, of Stockholm, having subsequently found the same kind of 

 worm in the Python livittatus, described it as a Bothriocephalus. 

 M. Durernoy, Professor of the Faculty of Science, at Strasbourg, met it 

 again in 1833, in the intestine of a Boa, firmly attached to the papillae 

 which surround the sinus into which open the pancreatic and biliary 

 canals, and he gave it the name Bothridium laticeps.* In 1836, Le- 

 blonde was sent some specimens of this worm, found by M. Bourjot, the 

 Professor of Natural History in the Eoyal College of Bourbon, in a spe- 

 cies of Boa, said by him to be the Anaconda {Boa scytale, Linn.). He 

 read a paper on these worms before the Philomatique Society in Paris, 

 December 10, 1836, in which he minutely describes tbe animal. The 

 structure of the parietes of the double tubular head is, according to him, 

 a homogeneous parenchyma, uniformly contractile, which he would call 

 muscular, if he were forced to give it a purely anatomical name, but in 



"Annates des Sciences Naturelles," 1833, tome xxx., p. 15/ 



