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WORMIA. 
Society.—_ Communications to the Board of Agricul- 
ture.— Donaldson on Manures. 
WOOLLEN RAGS. See Rags. 
WOOLLY BLIGHT. See Apuis. 
WOOL-SHEARS. See SHrarine or SHuxp. 
WORM. See Worms. 
WORM-GRASS. See Spreensa. 
WORMIA. A genus of ornamental tropical 
plants, of the dillenia tribe. The toothed species, 
W. dentata, was introduced from Ceylon to British 
collections in 1818; and is an evergreen, yellow- 
flowered, small tree of naturally about 20 or 25 
feet in height; and thrives best in a soil of peaty 
loam. Three other species are known. 
WORMING. An operation performed on young 
dogs for the purpose of preventing them from 
biting should they happen to become mad. It 
consists in making an incision underneath the 
| tongue, and drawing out with a hook a small 
worm-like ligament. It was regarded by many 
sportsmen of a very recent period, and is still 
regarded by some, as a preventive of prime im- 
portance and great power; but it really is per- 
fectly useless. 
~ WORMS. Invertebrated animals, with soft 
elongated bodies. The red-blooded worms or 
annelides constitute one of Cuvier’s four classes 
of Articulata,—the other classes being crustace- 
ans, spiders, and insects; and they are the only 
invertebrate animals who have red blood. Their 
body is more or less elongated, and comprises 
numerous rings, of the character either of seg- 
ments or of transverse plice; their head consists 
merely of the first of these rings, and does not 
seem to differ much from the rest, except in the 
presence of the mouth and the principal organs 
| of the senses ; their systems of locomotion do not 
compose articulated feet, but consist principally 
of setz or fasciculi of stiff and moveable hairs, 
commanded by the contractility of the body ; 
their oral organs, in some instances, amount to 
little more than a simple tubular orifice,—but in 
others comprise jaws, more or less strong; their 
organs of sense consist principally of fleshy or 
articulated tentacula, and of certain blackish 
points, which are thought to be eyes, but which 
do not exist in all the species; their respiration 
is performed in organs which, in some cases, are 
developed externally, and in others lie on the 
surface or dip into the interior; their circula- 
tion is carried on in a double and closed system 
of arteries and veins, which comprises, in some 
instances, one or several visible hearts or fleshy 
ventricles ; and their nervous system consists of 
a double knotted or ganglionic cord, similar to 
that of insects. Almost all, except the lumbrici 
or earth-worms, are aquatic animals; and several 
penetrate into holes at the bottom of the water, 
or construct tubes there with the ooze or other 
substances, or even exude a calcareous secretion 
which envelopes them with a sort of tubular 
shell. The lumbrici, or terrestrial worms, are 
better known than almost all the multitude of 
t ee 
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WORMS. 771 | | 
other species taken together, and are noticed in 
the article EarrHworm ; and the leeches are the 
most interesting aquatic species, and are noticed 
in the article Lurca—Other worms than the 
annelides are recognised only in popular nomen- 
clature, or belong only to popular classification ; 
and they comprise widely different groups and 
do not constitute or comprise any one natural 
class. A great many are larve; and most of the 
others are entozoons. See the articles Larva, 
CATERPILLAR, WIREWoRM, GRuB, Worms (IntTEs- | 
TINAL), and PARASITES (ANIMAL). | 
WORMS (Inrestinat). Larve, annelides, or 
entozoons living in the intestines of the larger 
animals. They have been regarded by grooms, 
dairy-men, cattle-men, and cow-doctors as the 
causes of several troublesome diseases in horses 
and cattle; but they really do very little harm, 
and seldom challenge the enlightened veterina- 
rian’s serious attention. Some have such an 
economy as to render them essentially innocuous; 
and others, though armed with powers of evil, 
are, in general, either too few in number or too 
well resisted by the functional energies or the 
organic defences of the viscera to be able to do 
serious mischief. All, in a general view, are re- 
ferred to in the article Parasites (ANIMAL); and 
some of the principal are particularly noticed in 
the articles Ascariprs, Bots, and Finartra. 
The long white worm, or common intestinal 
round worm, Lumbricus teres, sometimes occurs in 
the small intestines of both the horse and the ox. 
It greatly resembles the common earthworm, 
and has usually a length of from 6 to 10 inches, 
and is a sufficiently repulsive and formidable 
looking animal. If it be numerous, it may con- | 
sume so much of the mucus and nutriment of | 
the intestines as to operate like a disease, and | 
may indicate its devastations by tightness of the 
horse’s or the ox’s skin, roughness of the coat, 
and a tucked-up state of the belly; but, in gen- | 
eral, it can be detected only by being occasionally | 
voided in the feces. The best treatment of a | 
horse whom it has been discovered or may be 
strongly suspected to infest, is to give a drachm 
of tartar emetic in a bran mash every night for 
a, week, and then administer a brisk purgative.— 
A small species of strongulus frequently accom- 
panies the long white worm in the ox. The den- 
ticulated tapeworm, Tenia dentieulata, small in 
size and becoming attenuated and sometimes al- 
most filiform toward the neck, has been found 
occasionally in the abomasum and the small in- 
testines of the ox, and still more rarely in the 
intestines of the horse. Th@7ricocephalus affinis, 
a small long worm, with a minute head and an | 
elongated and thread-like neck, sometimes oc- — 
curs in the cecum of the ox. The Amphistoma | 
coniewm, a frequent and abundant entozoon in | 
birds, but here of considerably larger size, often 
inhabits the rumen and the reticulum of cattle. 
But these little creatures are objects of interest 
chiefly to the naturalist, and need not occasion 
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