extremely elastic; after immersion in alcohol they contract and wrinkle. The anterior end is broader than the posterior, is rounded, and presents a papilliform projection on which is found the compressed and more or less completely invaginated head. (Fig. 159.) The body is flat, unsegmented, and transversely wrinkled. On the ventral surface there is, as a rule, a distinct longitudinal median groove; on the dorsal surface there may be two longitudinal grooves. No sexual organs are present.
In my case the parasites (11) lay under the peritoneum in the neighbourhood of the kidneys and iliac fossæ, and (1) apparently free in the pleural cavity. They were more or less coiled up and irregularly disposed in the subperitoneal fascia, looking like ribbon-strings of fat until turned out, when they exhibited feeble yet distinct movements. Scheube found a specimen in the urethra of a Japanese. Ijima and Murata also found the same parasite in the urethra, the worm appearing during micturition with its head projecting from the urethra and occluding it. Thrice very young specimens have been found in Japan lying beneath the conjunctiva and producing swellings the size of a bean. In one of the Japanese cases the parasite was found in the subcutaneous connective tissue of the thigh, where during nine years it gave rise to indolent tumours that recurred fairly regularly every summer at about the same spot; it seemed to change its position very readily, disappearing in about ten days. At the time of its last appearance the swelling attained the size of a fist; an abscess formed from which the worm was extracted. A similar parasite, identified by Sambon, was likewise extracted from an abscess on the thigh of a Masai, in German East Africa, by Baxter; and another was found by Daniels in a Carib in British Guiana.
Nothing is known of the life -history of this worm.Leuckart conjectures that the definitive host is probably a carnivorous animal closely associated with man, possibly the dog, the cat, or perhaps the pig. Looss believes that it is an aquatic animal (a bird or a fish), because the parasite appears to endeavour to
