ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
455 
Taenia Brandti.* — Dr. N. Cholodkowsky describes a new species of 
Tapeworm of which he has obtained 8 specimens, 5 from cattle and 3 
from pigs. The fact that the fully formed tapeworm occurs in the 
intestine of pigs imparts a certain interest to T. Brandti , which in 
many respects resembles T. ovilla Rivolta, chiefly if a ripe proglottis 
of T. ovilla be compared with an unripe one of T. Brandti. The latter 
is distinguishable from T. ovilla by the following characters : — (1) its 
greater size; (2) by the greatly branched shape of uterus, which in 
T. ovilla is quite simple ; (3) by the peculiar relations of the vesiculm 
seminales ; (4) by presence of accessory male sexual organs. 
T. Brandti is about 3 m. long and 10 mm. broad at its distal end. 
The head is a roundish cube, devoid of booklets, has four large suckers 
and a short stumpy rostellum. 
Polycercus. j — Prof. W. A. Haswell and Mr. J. P. Hill give an 
account of this remarkable cystic worm, which was first found at Odessa 
in Lumbricus terrestris, and does not seem to have been reinvestigated 
since. A form of undoubted affinities with it has been found in Bidymo- 
gaster sylvicola, a common earthworm in New South Wales. Feeding 
experiments to breed the Tsenia have not been successful. 
The infested earthworms usually contain an immense number of 
cysts, which adhere to the outer surface of the alimentary canal ; each 
cyst contains a number of fully formed cysticercoids, but nothing was 
seen of hooked embryos. The history appears to be this — the hooked 
embryo developes into a rounded cellular body, which becomes enclosed 
in a cyst, which is probably entirely of an adventitious character ; buds 
are given off from the periphery of the mass and develope into cysti- 
cercoids which become free in the interior of the cyst ; the head, with 
its hooks and suckers, is developed from the central portion of the solid 
bud ; the middle layers form the “ body ” and the outermost the caudal 
vesicle. 
The authors point out that in many cysticercoids there appears to be 
a progressive invagination of the anterior parts within those lying behind ; 
this condition of things is clearly secondary, being brought about in 
adaptation to special circumstances. In Polycercus this adaptation may 
be said to reach its furthest known limit ; there is no invagination in 
the strict sense, but the parts of the cysticercoid are actually developed 
one within the other, and it is not till the cysticercoid is about to pass 
into the adult Cestode, that by a process of evagination the parts assume 
their normal and primitive relations to one another. 
In some respects Polycercus is more nearly related to Staphylocystis 
than any other known form of Cestode larva ; in both the development 
is a process of external proliferation from the product of the hooked 
embryo, though the essential similarity is somewhat disguised by the 
development in Polycercus of an adventitious investment, which is not 
represented in Staphylocystis. 
5. Incertse Sedis. 
Balanoglossus from New South Wales.! — Mr. J. P. Hill makes 
the interesting announcement that a species of Balanoglossus has been 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol, u. Parasitenk., xv. (1894) pp. 552-4 (2 figs.). 
t Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., viii. (1894) pp. 365-76 (2 pis.). 
J Tom. cit., p. 324. V 
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