Volume 183402

The book of nature / By John Mason Good.

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of nature / By John Mason Good. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/412 (page 10)
    the cause or the result of this disease has never yet been sufficiently ascertained. There are other spe- cies of this animal found in the stomach, intestines, or liver of various other animals, and occasionally of man himself. The fasciola is hermaphrodite and oviparous. The gordius or hair-worm is chiefly worthy of no- tice as being supposed, in one of its species, if incau- tiously handled, to inflict a bite at the end of the fingers, and produce the complaint called a whitlow. It inhabits soft stagnant waters, is from four to six inches long, and is almost perpetually twisting itself into various contortions or knots. The two last kinds I-shall enumerate under this order of worms are, the lumbricus or earth-worm, including the dew-worm and the slug; and the hirudo or leech, both of them too well known under several species to require any farther remark in the present rapid outline. This order includes nearly the whole of M. Cuvier’s class of worms, with the exception of his sea-worms, already adverted to. The sEconD ORDER of the worM CLASs is denomi- nated MOLLUSCA, MOLLUSCOUS, Or SOFT-BODIED SHELL-WORMS; and consists, for the most part, of similar animals to those found in snails, oysters, nautilus, and other shells, but without a shelly de- fence: and hence, in their ordinal character, they are described as simple animals, naked, but furnished with limbs, of some kind or other. By this last mark they are distinguished from the preceding, or intestinal order, which, as already observed, consists of simple animals, naked and destitute of limbs. To place the order more immediately before you, I shall select a few examples from those animals