224 Mr. E. Nettleship on Taenia echinococcus. [June 21, 



reduced ; but foil of fused palladium, for which I am indebted to Mr. G. 

 Matthey, still absorbed 68 volumes of gas. A certain degree of porosity 

 may be admitted to exist in these metals, and to the greatest extent in 

 their hammered condition. It is believed that such metallic pores, and 

 indeed all fine pores, are more accessible to liquids than to gases, and in 

 particular to liquid hydrogen. Hence a peculiar dialytic action may reside 

 in certain metallic septa, like a plate of platinum, enabling them to sepa- 

 rate hydrogen from other gases. 



In the form of sponge, platinum absorbed 1*48 times its volume of 

 hydrogen and palladium 90 volumes. The former of these metals, in the 

 peculiar condition of platinum-black, is already known to take up several 

 hundred volumes of the same gas. The assumed liquefaction of hydrogen 

 in such circumstances appears to be the primary condition of its oxidation 

 at a low temperature. A repellent property possessed by gaseous mole- 

 cules appears to resist chemical combination, as well as to establish a limit 

 to their power to enter the minuter pores of solid bodies. 



Carbonic oxide is taken up more largely than hydrogen by soft iron. 

 Such an occlusion of carbonic oxide by iron, at a low red heat, appears to 

 be the first and a necessary step in the process of acieration. The gas 

 appears to abandon half its carbon to the iron, when the temperature is 

 afterwards raised to a considerably higher degree. 



Silver has a similar relation to oxygen, of which metal the sponge, fritted 

 but not fused, was found to hold in one case so much as 7'49 volumes of 

 oxygen. A plate or wire of the fused metal retains the same property, but 

 much reduced in intensity, as with plates of fused platinum and palladium 

 in their relation to hydrogen. 



VII. " Notes on the Rearing of T<2nia echinococcus in the Dog, from 

 Hydatids, with some Observations on the Anatomy of the 

 Adult Worm." By Edward Nettleship, Mem. E-oyal Agric. 

 Coll. Communicated by T. Spencer Cobbold^ M.D. Re- 

 ceived May 24, 1866. 



On March 28th, 1866, I obtained from Clare Market the liver and 

 lungs of a sheep containing numerous Echinococcus hydatids ; in some 

 the outer cyst was partly calcified, but all the hydatids contained clear 

 fluid, and great numbers of scolices attached to the endocyst. Within two 

 hours of the death of the sheep to which the organs belonged, I gave two 

 or three of the smaller hydatids to a young dog, about six months old ; 

 first puncturing the hydatid and administering the collapsed cyst, and then 

 making him drink the fluid of the cyst, in which some Echinococci were 

 floating. 



The next day I gave him a second feeding of the remaining hydatids ; 

 this second batch he threw up within half an hour of the feeding,^ but he 

 afterwards swallowed the broken membranes again, and did not afterwards 



