other places on the western coast. This bird, apparently mentioned by Marcgrave more than 200 years ago, but first described by Pallas, is remarkable for the structure--unique, if not possessed by its representative forms--of its _furcula_, where the head, instead of being the thin plate found in all other _Gallinae_, is a hollow cup opening upwards, into which the trachea dips, and then emerges on its way to the lungs. Allied to the genus _Numida_, but readily distinguished form among other characters by the possession of spurs and the absence of a helmet, are two very rare forms, _Agelastes_ and _Phasidus_, both from western Africa. Of their habits nothing is known. All these birds are beautifully figured in Elliot's _Monograph of the Phasianidae_, from drawings by Wolf. (A. N.) FOOTNOTE: [1] Columella (_De re rustica_, viii. cap. 2) distinguishes the _Meleagris_ from the _Gallina Africana_ or _Numidica_, the latter having, he says, a red wattle (_palea_, a reading obviously preferable to _galea_), while it was blue in the former. This would look as if the _Meleagris_ had sprung from what is now called _Numida ptilorhyncha_, while the _Gallina Africana_ originated in the _N. meleagris_, species which have a different range, and if so the fact would point to two distinct introductions--one by Greeks, the other by Latins. [2] Specimens from the Gambia are said to be smaller, and have been described as distinct under the name of _N. rendalli_. [3] Darwin (_Anim. and Pl. under Domestication_, i. 294), gives this as the original stock of the modern domestic birds, but obviously by an accidental error. As before observed, it may possibly have been the true [Greek: meleagris] of the Greeks. GUINEA-WORM (_Dracontiasis_), a disease due to the _Filaria medinensis_, or _Dracunculus_, or Guinea-worm, a filarious nematode like a horse-hair, whose most frequent habitat is the subcutaneous and intramuscular tissues of the legs and feet. It is common on the Guinea coast, and in many other tropical and subtropical regions and has been familiarly known since ancient times. The condition of dracontiasis due to it is a very common one, and sometimes amounts to an epidemic. The black races are most liable, but Europeans of almost any social rank and of either sex are not altogether exempt. The worm lives in water, and, like the _Filaria sanguinis hominis_, appears to have an intermediate host for its larval stage. It is doubtful whether the worm penetrates the skin of the legs directly; it is not impossible that the intermediate host (a cyclops) which contains the larvae may be swallowed with the water, and that the larvae of the _Dracunculus_ may be set free in the course of digestion.