EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
249 
surprised to hear the explanations of the enigma I have presented. 
Perhaps they will be startled at the thought that the germ 
theory, scarcely yet introduced into experimental researches, 
should reserve for science and its applications discoveries so little 
expected. Earth-worms are the messengers of the germs of 
anthrax. It is these who from the depths of the burying 
grounds, bring back to the surface of the earth the terrible 
parasite. It is in the small cylinders of earth with the very 
tine earthy particles which these worms discharge and leave at 
the surface of the ground, after the dews of morning or after 
rain, that with many other germs, those of anthrax are found. 
An experiment will easily demonstrate this. Take some earth, 
mixed with spores of bacteridies, containing the worms ; let their 
bodies be opened after several days, using all necessary care to 
extract from them the earthy cylinders contained in their intes¬ 
tines, and a great number of carbuncular spores will be found. 
It is evident that if the soft earth of the surface of the graves of 
carbunculous animals contain germs of anthrax and often in large 
quantities, those germs come from the disintegration, by the 
rain, of the small excrementitial cylinders of the worms. The 
segregated dust of the earth is thrown on the plants near the 
spot and thus the animals which feed upon them receive the 
germs of anthrax, with which they become infected as we have 
seen in our experiments in soiling fresh cXovqy.-t-G azette Medicate. 
UPON THE GASTRODISCUS SONSINOII, (Cobbolb,) PARASITE OF THE 
HORSE. 
By M. Megnin. 
In 1876 a strange parasite was discovered, in a horse, in 
Egypt, by an Italian Veterinarian, who sent it to Dr. P. Sonsino. 
It w T as sent to Profs. Cobbold, of London, and Leuckart, of 
Leipzig. Those learned hetminthologists recognized it for an 
entirely new specie, of the order of the Trematodes, a group of 
the Amphistomains; they made for him a new gender. Gastrodis¬ 
cus , (Lunkhart) and named it Gastrodiscus Sonsinoii (Cobbold). 
