[The host in Europe is _Limnæus truncatulus_. This snail extends from Siberia to Sicily and Algeria, and according to Captain Hutton is a native of Afghanistan. It also occurs in Thibet, Amoor, Morocco, Tunis, Canary Islands and the Faroe Islands. It deposits its eggs or spawn upon the mud around ponds, ditches and streams. The eggs are laid in batches of thirty to a hundred, each snail laying as many as 1,500 eggs; they are united into strips of a gelatinous substance. In about two weeks young snails appear. It is amphibious, being more frequently met with out of the water than in it. It occurs in elevated spots as well as in low-lying districts. Moquin-Tandon found it at 4,000 feet in the Pyrenees. In the allied species, _L. peregra_, the fluke will develop up to a certain stage, but never completes all its varied phases. [In South America the host is probably _Limnæus viator_, Orb., and in North America _Limnæus humilis_, Say.--F. V. T.] In human beings as well as in some of the mammals quoted above, the liver fluke is only a casual parasite, and hitherto only twenty-eight cases have been observed in man; the infection was mostly a mild one and there were no symptoms, or only very trifling ones; a few isolated cases were only discovered _post mortem_. Occasionally, however, even when the infection was inconsiderable, severe symptoms were set up, which in isolated cases led to death. The symptoms (enlargement and painfulness of the liver, icterus) merely pointed to a disease of the liver. _Diagnosis_ can only be established by finding eggs in the fæces. Care should be taken not to confuse them with those of _Dibothriocephalus latus_. HALZOUN. [Illustration: FIG. 144.--Young _Fasciola hepatica_, soon after entry into the liver. The intestinal cæca have lateral diverticula. Magnified. (From Leuckart.)] In North Lebanon, the liver fluke is, according to A. Khouri, a frequent parasite of man, not in the liver, however, but in the pharynx. The occurrence in this unusual site is effected by the eating of raw infected livers, especially those of goats (_Capra hircus_). The flukes thus taken in do not all reach the stomach, where they would be soon killed, but some of them attach themselves to the pharyngeal mucosa and to the adjoining parts, and there cause inflammation and swelling, which lead to dyspnœa, dysphagia, dysphonia and congestion of the head, sometimes even to still more severe symptoms, and even death. The affection termed “Halzoun” lasts some hours or several days, and after vomiting recovery sets in. In other cases man becomes infected in the usual way by ingesting cysts attached to grass or the underside of leaves of plants (_e.g._, Rumex sp.), where they are overlooked from their scanty size (0·2 to 0·3 mm.). [Illustration: FIG. 145.--_Fasciola gigantica._ × 6-1/2 (After Looss.)]