Oct. 10,1913 
Cysticercus Ovis 
39 
greenish, orange, or brown, and several of these colors may be observed 
in the contents of a single cyst. In some cases the cysticercus more or 
less shriveled and commonly with evaginated head may be readily dis¬ 
tinguished upon close scrutiny, but generally is to be found only with 
difficulty in degenerate cysts. The dead cysticercus found in degenerate 
cysts usually has a bright-white color which makes it more readily 
apparent when the contents of the cyst happen to be mostly of a con¬ 
trasting color. In some of the larger degenerate cysts it is noteworthy 
that the cysticerci found have been no larger than those found in much 
smaller cysts. For example, the cysticerci found in two degenerate cysts, 
10 by 9 and 10 by 7 mm. in diameter, respectively, measured in their 
shriveled condition 2 mm. in diameter in one case and 2 >2 mm. in diameter 
in the other and thus were somewhat smaller than the shriveled cysti¬ 
cercus from a cyst 5 by 4 mm. in diameter, which measured 3 by 2 mm. 
DISTRIBUTION IN BODY 
The cysts of Cysticercus ovis as found in sheep carcasses are usually com¬ 
paratively few in number and are commonly limited to the heart or 
diaphragm, though in many such cases if the muscular parts of the carcass 
are cut into slices additional cysts are brought to view. Not uncommonly 
cysts may be found in the muscles of mastication and in the tongue. 
Sometimes they appear superficially on the muscles beneath the skin, 
sometimes in the panniculus carnosus itself. The abdominal musculature 
is not uncommonly affected. Degenerate cysts may be found in the 
lungs, and in this location they can not be distinguished macroscopically 
from the small degenerate cysts of C. ienuicollis . The parasites have 
been found in a degenerate condition in the wall of the esophagus. 
Degenerate cysts found in the wall of the rumen and fourth stomach in 
a lamb which had been fed segments of tapeworm (pp. 23 and 24) were 
propably C. ovis . Morot has found degenerate cysts in the kidney which 
may have been C. ovis. Degenerate cysticerci in the liver are probably 
not C. ovis, but are more likely C. tenuicollis, which frequently occurs in 
this location. In the writer’s experiments none of several lambs fed 
segments of the tapeworm stage of C. ovis showed any invasion of the 
liver, whereas the liver was affected in each of two lambs fed segments of 
Taenia hydatigena. 
Cysticercus ovis is therefore essentially a parasite of the intermuscular 
connective tissue and occurs but rarely in other locations. Except the 
heart and diaphragm, the parasite appears to have no distinct preference 
for any particular location in the carcass, and the parts named may appear 
to be preferred by the parasite simply because these parts are the most 
readily examined in post-mortem inspection, so that carcasses which have 
these parts affected are likely to be picked out by inspection, whereas 
other carcasses which may harbor cysts somewhere in the depths of the 
musculature are passed by because they show no cysts in accessible parts. 
The muscles of the head, particularly the muscles of mastication, are 
