337 
ON A REMARKABLE NEW SPECIES OF POROCEPHALUS 
(P. POME ROY I, SP. N.) FROM THE FORE-GUT OF A 
NIGERIAN COBRA. 
By W. N. F. WOODLAND, D.Sc., 
Indian Educational Service, Senior Professor of Zoology, Muir Central 
College, Allahabad, U.P., India. 
(From the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research, Endsleigh Gardens, 
London, N.W. 1.) 
(With 1 Text-figure.) 
In August, 1920, Dr Andrew Balfour, C.B., C.M.G., Director of the Wellcome 
Bureau of Scientific Research, received from Mr A. Pomeroy, F.E.S., Official 
Entomologist in South Nigeria, a tube containing some parasites from the 
“fore-gut” of a Cobra (Naia nigricollis Reinh.) from Ilaro, South Nigeria. Dr 
Balfour kindly handed these specimens to me for examination. The specimens 
were few in number, comprising only ten Nematodes and the two examples of 
Porocephalus described in the present Note. One of these examples at once 
attracted my attention by reason of its remarkable external form (Text- 
figure 1, A). I have consulted most of the available literature dealing with 
Porocephalus and the figure which, so far as I have discovered, most nearly 
approaches that of the present specimen is that of P. annulatus Baird, supplied 
by Shipley (his Text-figure 5, p. 59) in his memoir on the Linguatulidae 1 . 
From my reproduction of Shipley’s figure (Text-figure 1, C) it will be seen 
that Porocephalus annulatus, like the new species now to be described, has a very 
narrow “neck, ’ but whereas in P. annulatus this neck is very short, in the new 
species it is comparatively very long; moreover, whereas in P. annulatus the 
cephalo-thorax (prosoma) is not longer than broad (or only slightly so in 
some specimens) and the first annulus of the “abdomen” (opisthosoma) is 
certainly no larger than succeeding annuli, in the new species the prosoma is 
roughly three times longer than it is broad and the first annulus is at least 
twice the size of the third at any succeeding annulus. 
The External Features of a Female Specimen of 
Porocephalus pomeroyi, sp. n. 
Text-figure 1 (A, A', A") illustrates clearly the principal external features 
of a female specimen of Porocephalus pomeroyi, sp. n. From these I have 
drawn up the following diagnosis: body white, cylindrical and divided dis¬ 
tinctly into (1) a large prosoma, (2) a long narrow “neck” and (3) an annulated 
1 Shipley, A. E. (1898), Archives de Parasitologic , i, 52. Shipley provides a better figure in 
his article in the Cambridge Natural History Volume on Arachnida, p. 490, Fig. 250. 
