The works of Francis Maitland Balfour, Volume 2 (of 4) : $b A treatise on comparative embryology: InvertebrataBalfour, Francis M. (Francis Maitland)
Science
The works of Francis Maitland Balfour, Volume 2 (of 4) : $b A treatise on comparative embryology: Invertebrata
Balfour, Francis M. (Francis Maitland)
Embryology; Zoology
A still more complicated form of cystic worm is that known as
Echinococcus, parasitic in the liver, lungs, etc. of man and various
domestic Ungulata. In the adult state it is known as _Tænia
echinococcus_ and infests the intestine of the dog. The cystic worm
developed from the six-hooked embryo has usually a spherical form, and
is invested in a very thick cuticle (fig. 96 E and F, and fig. 99). It
does not itself directly give rise to Tænia heads, but after it
reaches a certain size there are formed on the inner side of its walls
small protuberances, which soon grow out into vesicles connected with
the walls of the cyst by narrow stalks (figs. 96 F and 99 C). In the
interior of these vesicles a cuticle is developed. It is in these
secondary vesicles that the heads originate. According to Leuckart,
they either arise as outgrowths of the wall of the vesicle on the
inner face of which the armature is developed, which subsequently
become involuted and remain attached to the wall of the vesicle by a
narrow stalk, or they arise from the first as papilliform projections
into the lumen of the vesicle, on the outer side of which the armature
is formed. Recent observers only admit the second of these modes of
development. The Echinococcus larva, in addition to giving rise to the
above head-producing vesicles, also gives rise by budding to fresh
cysts, which resemble in all respects the parent cyst. These cysts may
either be detached in the interior (fig. 96 F) of the parent or
externally. They appear to spring in most cases from the walls of the
parent cyst, but there are some discrepancies between the various
accounts of the process. In the cysts of the second generation
vesicles are produced in which new heads are formed. As the primitive
cyst grows, it naturally becomes more and more complicated, and the
number of heads to which one larva may give rise becomes in this way
almost unlimited.
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