385 



Preliminary Note on Trypanosoma eberthi (Kent) ( = Spirochseta 

 eberthi, Liihe) and some other Parasitic Forms from the 

 Intestine of the Foivl. 



By C. H. Martin, B.A., Demonstrator of Zoology in Glasgow University, and 

 Muriel Bobertson, M.A., Carnegie Besearch Fellow, Assistant to the 

 Brofessor of Protozoology in the University of London. 



(Communicated by Prof. J. Graham Kerr, F.B.S. Beceived June 18, — Bead 



June 24, 1909.) 



[Plate 8.] 



In the eleventh volume of the ' Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaftliche Zoologie/ 

 published in 1862 (p. 98), Eberth described, in a remarkable paper, " ein 

 kleines Infusorium " which he had found abundantly in the caeca of various 

 birds (fowl, partridge, duck, goose) ; he described it as a flattened crescentic 

 form measuring - 012 to 0"014 mm. long by - 006 to 0"008 mm. wide, with 

 a wide and a narrow extremity, the latter of which is drawn out into a slight 

 point. He distinguished the true body of the animal, in which he sometimes 

 thought he saw a nucleus, from the conspicuous " hautige Saum," the 

 movements and appearance of which he described and figured very clearly. 

 He considers that this form is related to the form seen by Leydig in the gut 

 of Piscicola, Pontobdella, and Ixodes, which Leydig had believed came from 

 the blood of fish, and those described in the blood of various fish and of the 

 frog. Eberth, however, remarked that he could not find his parasite in the 

 blood of the infected birds, though he found two other flagellates, which he 

 does not further describe, in the intestine. 



Leuckart, in his first edition (1863) of ' Die Parasiten des Menschen ' 

 (vol. 1, p. 140), placed the animal described by Eberth in a new genus, 

 Scenolophus ; in his second edition, however, under Stein's influence 

 (vide infra), he came to the conclusion that this animal " Vermutlich 

 gleichfalls nichts Anderes als eine Trichomonas ist, bei der die Anwesenheit 

 des Geisselapparates ubersehen wurde " (2nd Edition, p. 312). 



Stein (1878) was inclined to consider the parasite as a Trichomonas of 

 which the anterior flagella had been overlooked. ('Der Organismus der 

 Infusionsthiere,' Abtheilung. Ill, 1. Halfte, p. 79. " Sollte nun das vordere 

 End, wie ich vermuthe, noch mit zwei Geisseln versehen sein, so wurde 

 dieser Parasit, aus dem Leuckart sogleich eine neue Scenolophus gemacht hat, 

 unbedingt zur Gatt. Trichomonas gehoren.") 



The next reference to this form that we have found is to be met with in 



