EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
333 
a 
guished savants who have made parasitism a special 
object of study and research. 
Referring to the theory, as he called it, of the develop¬ 
ment of distoma, Dr. Harley adds : “ This error may be 
recognised by any farmer who will take the trouble to feed 
a new-born lamb with a few flukes taken direct from the 
body of a recently killed sheep, and before they have dis¬ 
charged their eggs, and keeping the lamb free from further 
infection ; in a few weeks then examine the alimentary canal 
and liver, when he will find the parasites in increased num¬ 
bers in the body of the lamb.”. 
We pass over the suggestion that the farmer should un¬ 
dertake such an inquiry as the writer probably intended to 
be figurative and not literal. He must have known that in 
the event of flukes being developed from the ova of the 
parent worm they would be necessarily minute objects at 
the end of a few weeks, and therefore not discoverable by a 
person who was unaccustomed to pathological investigations. 
But we feel justified in remarking that the statement ought 
not to have been made by a scientific man on any less 
positive ground than that of his own observations. We tried 
the experiment repeatedly many years ago, and, as a matter 
of course, without result; but the statement of a medical 
authority would be accepted without question by people who 
knew nothing about the subject, and if no harm is done, no 
good can possibly arise. 
Dr. Cobbold, in his letter of reply to Dr. Harley, simply 
contents himself with flatly denying the writer’s statement, 
apparently not deeming the matter worth discussion. Dr. 
Crisp refers, we presume, ironically to Dr. Harley’s im¬ 
portant discovery, and asks for details of his experiments, 
which, it is needless to say, he does not get. Meanwhile one 
professional friend is conducting some experiments in order 
to determine whether or not lambs may be infected by the 
droppings from the dams, and another has arrived at the 
astounding conclusion that flukes are the growth of a day, a 
simple consequence, he solemnly assures us, of the very 
magnificent law which regulates the world—the law of 
spontaneous development! 
