HiEM ATOZOA OF VERTEBRATES. 
79 
the disease which commonly occurs in cattle is known as piro- 
plasmosis. 
In the cases of man and the domestic animals it is the practice, 
in different countries and districts, to give local names to the 
maladies occasioned by the various parasites. 
J Filariasis. 
Filaria mansoni, n. sp. 
The presence of blood-filarise in this island has been previously 
recorded for man* and the crow.f 
We have further to note that in the blood of a cachectic pariah 
dog examined recently several filaria embryos were found 
strongly resembling those of Filaria immitis , to which species 
we think they probably belong. In preparations stained with 
haematoxylin and eosin the parasites presented no sheath, the tail 
was pointed, the body not very granular, almost homogeneous; 
the length was about 0T2 mm. 
The filariae which live in the blood are embryos produced by 
adult females which may be found somewhere imbedded in the 
tissues of the host. It is known that the species of the genus 
Filaria occur especially in mammals and birds, that it is to say 
in warm-blooded vertebrates. But not all species give rise to 
blood-filariae. 
We have now to describe an interesting case of filariasis of a 
cold-blooded reptile, the Brahminy Lizard, Mabuia carinata.% 
In the blood of a mature female lizard of this species captured in 
Colombo in July, 1904, we observed numerous filarise slowly 
wriggling, measuring about six or seven times the length of a 
blood-corpuscle. 
The wriggling consists in serpentine undulations of the body 
which do not involve much change of position and, in a fresh 
preparation for example, the little worms do not dart across the 
field of the microscope. They appear as whitish bodies when alive 
in the blood, cylindrical in shape, rounded at both ends, and 
destitute of any obvious differentiation. They are relatively 
rather stout, about half as thick again or nearly twice as thick as 
the linear embryos at the time of their extrusion from the body 
of the parent. 
* Manson, P. Tropical Diseases. London, 1900, p. 483. Of 55 cases examined 
one yielded Filaria nocturna. 
f See this Journal, Part II., June, 1903, p. 28 ; and Part IV., p. 103 (Filaria 
vivipara , Linstow, in the gray crow, Corvus splendem'). 
f Called “ hikanella ” in Sinhalese ; “ aranai ” in Tamil. 
