86 



remove the parasite and enable the sheep to recover. The intelligent 

 farmer might learn to do this himself, but after it is all done the cost 

 of doing it will about equal the value of the sheep saved. The true 

 treatment, and that which has saved France and Germany more than 

 any medicinal or surgical treatment devised, consists in prevention. 



Prevention lies in the treatment of the sheep and of the dogs. As the 

 developed coenurus comes only from the craninum or spinal canal, it is 

 very easy to prevent dogs from being infected by taking care that they 

 can not get these portions of the carcass either when the sheep are 

 slaughtered or after they have died in the pasture or sheep-cote. The 

 heads should either be rendered, burned, or deeply buried, and not 

 thrown into the first convenient corner. 



When the skulls and viscera must be fed to dogs they should be sub- 

 jected to a prolonged boiling. The soup so made would be harmless. 

 When the lambs are known to have passed through the first stage of 

 the disease and are fat enough for sale, at the verj' beginning of the 

 secondary symptoms they should be slaughtered and marketed, care 

 being taken with the first killed to verify the diagnosis. This will save 

 more than any other proceeding. The treatment and handling of the 

 dogs are the same as for Tcenia marginata, except that T. coenurus, ac- 

 cording to Leuckart, develops in three or four weeks, and has to be 

 medicinally attended to oftener, or until the dogs are quite free from it. 



The adult. — Tcenia ccenurus, the adult tape-worm, which grows from 

 the cyst and causes the gid when in the sheep's head, resembles T. mar- 

 ginata and also T. serrata, a tape- worm which the dog acquires by eat- 

 ing the viscera of rabbits in which the young form is encysted. T. ser- 

 rata is about as large and long as T. marginata. T. coenurus is much 

 smaller than either, measuring when mature between 1 and 2 feet, while 

 the former measures a yard. It is also a slenderer species. The most 

 decided differences lie in the hooks of the head. T. serrata has the 

 largest head, the largest hooks, and the largest suckers, the latter 

 being a third larger than those of T. marginata. They are from thirty- 

 eight to forty-eight in number. The hooks of T. coenurus are between 

 twenty-four and thirty-two in mamber, and the slenderest of the three 

 species. The terminal segments also vary, those of T. ccenurus being 

 the smaller. The tot.al number of joints also differ, T. marginata having 

 five hundred and fifty or six hundred; T. serrata, three hundred and 

 twenty-five or three hundred and fifty, and T. coenurus about two 

 hundred. Exact measurements of all these .parts as given in text-books 

 enable one to definitely determine the species, but the flock-master 

 needs most to know that his own and his neighbor's dog harbor tape- 

 worms, which are prejudicial to his flocks, and to proceed against them. 



The ijresence of Hydatids (Twnia echinococcus, v. Siebold), (Plate XI, 

 Figs. 7, 8, and 9), is, if it occurs at all in this country, very rare. It 

 has a life history similar to T. marginata, /passing from sheep, cattle, 

 and pigs to dogs, and from dogs back again. In method of growth it 



