INTESTINAL WORMS. 



119 



length of sixty, or even a hundred feet. When we remem- 

 ber that these enormous bodies are supported within the 

 intestinal canal of the higher kinds of animals — man 

 among the number— their history assumes a strange 

 interest, coming, as it does, into such close intimacy with 

 our own, 



The joints of the Tape-worm become much smaller at 

 the fore part, diminishing at length so excessively as to 

 form a very attenuated neck, at the top of which is placed 

 a little globose head, furnished with a mouth, two rows of 

 hooks, and four suckers, in nowise differing from those 

 organs in the Cysticercus. A head like this, however, " sup- 

 ported on a neck so slender, would be quite unable to insure 

 secure attachment for the enormous body it is destined 

 to support • additional and firmer anchorage must there- 

 fore be provided : this provision has accordingly been 

 made. Upon the margin of each segment has been placed 

 a strong and prominent sucker, so constructed as to ad- 

 here with a firm gripe to the smooth walls of the intestine 

 where the creature has established its abode ; every joint 

 is, therefore, safely fixed in situ, and it thus becomes no 

 easy matter to dislodge a worm like this from its numerous 

 anchorages."* 



But what is extraordinary and altogether unparalleled 

 in the economy of the Tape-worms is this, that while, as 

 regards certain organs and functions, each is a single inde- 

 pendent animal, in others each is a compound of hundreds 

 of distinct animals. Thus there is but a single mouth 

 and a single alimentary system, while, in respect to the 

 reproductive apparatus, every one of the segments is a 



* Jones's Lectures on Nat. Hist., i. 152. 



