536 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.  [VouL. XXXIII. 
A new Bothriocephalid genus, Scyphocephalus, parasitic in Vara- 
nus, has been described by E. Riggenbach (Zool. Jahrb., Syst., XII, 
145, 1899). It is characterized by a deep, cup-shaped rostellum, 
which, however, is not primary, as in Cyathocephalus, but secondary, 
as shown by the long narrow grooves on the external surface, which 
are the reduced lateral bothria characteristic of the family. Other- 
wise the new genus is a true Bothriocephalid. 
Tetracotyle perca fluviatilis is found by Piana (Atti. Soc. Ital. Sci. 
Nat., XXXVII, 1898) to be present in 90-95 per cent of the fish in 
Varese and other Italian lakes, while in some adjacent bodies of 
water it was lacking. The author looks upon the species as the 
cause of fish epidemics there. 
In Ligula, M. Lühe calls attention (Centralb. Bakt., Abt. I, XXII, 
7, 280, 1898) to the existence of marked external segmentation at 
the anterior end, very similar to that of other cestodes, though the 
posterior two-thirds is entirely smooth. Strangely, however, the 
internal structure does not correspond to the segmentation. As 
the larva is uniformly smooth, the segmentation of the adult must 
be developed in the intestine of the definite host. It may be 
interpreted as rudimentary, and points to the degeneration of Ligula 
from jointed Dibothrian ancestors that have secondarily lost their 
segmentation. 
A statistical report on the “Nematodes Parasitic in Birds,” by 
W. Volz (Rev. Suisse Zool, VI, 1, 189, 1899), shows that hawks, 
fowls, and crows are most infected both in number of species and of 
individual parasites. Among the parasites, Heterakis vesicularis was 
the most common, occurring in nine out of twenty-three hosts exam- 
ined, and Z7ichosoma resectum was found in six hosts. Only two 
hosts harbored as many as five species each, while the majority of 
both hosts and parasites manifest individual association. 
Two new tapeworms of the domestic fowl from Brazil are described 
by Magalhâes (Arch. Par., I, 3, 442, 1898), Davainea oligophora, a 
minute form only 3 mm. long, and D. carioca. 
An intermediate host of Gigantorhynchus moniliformis has been 
found by Magalhées: (Arch. Par., I, 3, 361, 1898) in Periplaneta 
americana. Some interesting observations on the larva of the para- 
site are recorded in the same article. 
