ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
495 
of sand, form a light and incomplete shell, become detached from the 
individual in which they are produced, and give rise to young Difflugise. 
The cysts which are found at the bottom have nothing to do with repro- 
duction or the preservation of the individual ; they are cysts of putre- 
faction whose true origin is not yet known. 
Coccidia.* — Sig. P. Mingazzini describes Benedenia odopiana, and 
gives a diagnosis of the genus. The cysts generally exhibit complete 
sporulation ; the spores are oval or elliptical and very numerous ; there 
are three falciform bodies. The cysts with falciform bodies show a 
residual nucleus or more than one. The members of the species are 
parasites of Sepia and Odopus. 
Psorosperms in Coccothraustes.f — Drs. M. C. Francaviglia and 
C. de Fiore describe the occurrence of Psorospermium avium in Cocco- 
thraustes vulgaris , and have followed the development of the coccidia, 
confirming Piana’s observation as to the exceptional formation of micro- 
cocci independent of previous segmentation. 
New Cholera Microbe. J — Dr. P. Hehir describes a polymorphic 
protozoon which he has found not only in the rice-water evacuations, 
but also in the blood .of cholera patients. The various phases of the 
parasite are described with some minuteness, but it will suffice to state 
that the adult form, which has a long diameter of 1/500-1/1500 in., 
consists of a body with a cavity or vacuole, and that the body is sur- 
rounded by numerous flagella and spinous processes. The transitional 
forms are described as spherical, flagellated, spore-like, and amoeboid, so 
that the parasite is truly polymorphic, or, at any rate, protean in its 
varieties. 
There appears to be little or no difference between the appearances 
observed in the dejecta and in the blood, the principal feature about all 
the parasites being their movements and their rapid multiplication. 
They are found not only free in the blood-plasma, but also, as spores, in 
the corpuscles which by the growth of the parasite are eventually 
destroyed. 
Inoculation experiments made by injecting dogs with the blood of 
cholera patients failed ; while the mature parasite, “ not a few of its 
polymorphic forms and crowds of its spores,” have been found in the 
water of several wells. 
Should these observations be confirmed, the importance of the cholera 
vibrio will be considerably diminished. 
* Atti R. Accad. Lincei (Rend.) i., ser. v. (1892) pp. 175-81. 
f Boll. Soc. Rom. Stud. Zool., i. (1892) pp. 68-74 (1 ffi?.). 
X Indian Medical Gazette (Special Supplement), April 1892, 7 pp., 11 pis. 
