FOOT (A. W.) — ON ENTOZOA. 201 



that excellent authority. From year to year, however, many important 

 facts have proved the contrary. It was therefore very essential that 

 the puhlishing of a " Cyhele Hibernica" should receive from us every 

 assistance ; and it would be highly necessary that such a system of pub- 

 lication should be extended to all the departments of natural history of 

 this country. It was no unusual instance to see works emanating from 

 the English press purporting to be " Histories" of such and such 

 branches of natural history of Great Britain and Ireland, whereas, if 

 we search the latest publication of the day, we should find how incom- 

 plete they were with regard to this country. Other features with re- 

 gard to our labours here, and which are not creditable to us, are the 

 constant references to the authorities in England for decisions on differ- 

 ent points of discoveries made in this country. "We have men of science 

 among us, who are competent to work out correctly such seeming diffi- 

 culties ; and beyond reference for comparison to more extensive museums 

 or collections, we have ample intelligence to arrive at accurate conclu- 

 sions. The book now proposed, a " Cybele Hibernica," should have 

 his cordial support. 



The following paper was then read : — 



On Entozoa from some Animals in the Eoyal Zoological Gardens, 

 Phoenix Park, Dublin. By Arthur Wynne Eoot, M. B. 



The first specimen of these parasitic animals which I now bring for- 

 ward is a portion of a broad Tapeworm, which was found in the den of 

 the Polar Bear (Thalassactos maritimus). The piece is twenty-five 

 inches in length, composed of numerous segments slightly overlapping 

 each other, so as to give a kind of serration to the lateral margins of 

 the worm. Their average lateral width is half an inch, and their 

 vertical width the twelfth of an inch. The segments are sexually ma- 

 ture, being each crowded with ova. The reproductive orifices are si- 

 tuated in the median line, the series of the genital pores making a 

 very perceptible dusky streak running down the centre of the chain. 

 The whole appearance of the worm justifies the characteristic name 

 sometimes given to the broad Tapeworm in Germany of Bandwurm 

 or Ribbon worm. 



It is a general observation that in the Bothriocephali whole series 

 of segments pass off spontaneously, but never single segments, as in the 

 Taeniae.* This series of segments on the table seems to be from the 

 central part, or from near the lower extremity of the animal, the ante- 

 rior part of the typical species being very narrow, enlarging gradually 

 from above downwards, till, about the six-hundredth segment from the 

 head, according to Leuckart, the first sexually mature joints, or pro- 

 glottides (as Dujardin called them)f commence. There is, however, a 



* Kiichenmeister's "Manual of Parasites" Syd., Soc, p. 105. 



f " Annates des Sciences Naturelles" (1843), t. xx„ p. 341. 



2F 



