According to the discovery of Kloss (1855), the spores of the coccidia of the urinary organ of the garden snail were formed in far greater numbers: the round spores also harboured several (five to six) rodlets, which after the bursting of the spore-envelope became free. Eimer’s researches (1870) afforded information regarding a Coccidium from the intestine of the mouse, which was transformed _in toto_ into a “spore,” containing small sickle-shaped bodies. The fact was, moreover, established that the little bodies left the delicate envelope when in the intestine, made movements of flexion and extension, and were finally transformed into amœboid organisms, which apparently penetrated the epithelial cells; at all events, similar bodies of various sizes were seen in these cells. Taking the immense number of these parasites into account and the lack of any other cause, Eimer attributed the sudden death of his mice to the _Gregarina falciformis_, as the parasite was then called, just in the same way as a few years previously Reincke ascribed the acute and fatal intestinal catarrh of rabbits to the invasion of intestinal coccidia. All that had become known about coccidia up to 1879 was then compiled by Leuckart, and completed by his own observations on the coccidia of the liver of the rabbit. Experimental infections had already been conducted by Waldenburg (1862) with intestinal coccidia of rabbits, and by Rivolta (1869–73) with the coccidia of fowls, which experiments confirmed the importance of the spores, or bodies enclosed in them, in the transmission of the parasites to other animals. Accordingly, it was assumed that after the entry of the spores into the intestine the sporozoites were set free, actively penetrated into the intestinal cells, where they grew into coccidia, and finally became encysted. The further development, _i.e._, the formation of spores, took place outside the host’s body in these cases; in other cases (Kloss, Eimer) it took place within the host. Although much regarding the cycle of development was still hypothetical, the ideas coincided with the observations, and were therefore universally regarded as established. Further research confirmed this view in numerous new forms.