INTESTINAL WOBMS. 
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 Ct/sticercus. 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 bo 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. 
