31 
gether with the fact that it had never been fed on hog or 
rat meat, it is beheved that the beast was infested when 
it arrived at the garden. The same findings and con- 
clusions were reported for the Polar bear last year. 
Some of the Paradoxure meat was fed to white rats. 
They promptly died, doubtless from the toxic substances 
in the meat or parasitic cysts. Other portions were 
steeped in normal salt solution, which evidently extracted 
such poisons, for white rats fed upon the meat were now 
successfully infested. A third generation of the worms 
was obtained by feeding a second rat on meat from the 
first batch of rats. Morphologically they are the same 
as the human species, Trichinella spiralis. I have, upon 
request, supplied some of the living material to Dr. J. E. 
Ackert, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, together 
with the tissue from the Polar bear, and he writes me 
that he found adult living trichinae in the rat's intestines 
as long as eleven weeks after feeding. This is an unusu- 
ally long (if not indeed record breaking) persistence 
period for these worms; the period being commonly 
reported as up to seven weeks. This finding is important 
medically because it lengthens the period during which 
larvae may invade the host (rat, pig, man) and during 
which it may cause death. 
Coccidiosis in Young Himalayan Tahr. — We wish to 
record here that this animal, mentioned in last year's 
report as quarantined and receiving castor oil, ceased 
to show these organisms and was released for exhi- 
bition by April 1917. On the basis of one case we 
do not care to conclude whether the castor oil cured the 
animal or whether the organisms died out spontaneously^ 
i. e., overcome by the animal's natural protective de- 
defences. 
Trichosoma hepaticum. — Continuation of this work^ 
mentioned last year has resulted in the transmission of 
the parasite from wild gray rats to a white one, which at 
once confirms Bancroft's work and shows that our 
ova have incubated sufficiently long and are now in the 
infestive stage. Only two adults were found in the 
