(1) Of 482 starlings examined during the period November 1925 to February 1926, 169 were infested with the Gapeworm (S. trachealis): the percentage of infected birds being 35 per cent. This confirms the previous observations when the writer found 14 infected birds out of 38.

(2) There is a suggestion of a gradual increase, towards March, in the percentage of starlings infected.

(3) The average length of the gapeworm in starlings is much the same as the average length of the gapeworm of chickens.

(4) Welsh names for gapes are given.

(5) Gapes among chickens occurs in Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire from March to August; in young turkeys in May and June; and in adult turkeys and pheasants throughout the year.

(6) Starlings, turkeys and pheasants act as a bridging, between November to March when few or no young chickens occur for the propagation and distribution of the gapeworm.

(7) Cases are instanced of (a) a sudden outbreak of gapes among chickens kept in an area where no turkeys have been kept, (b) heavy losses among pheasants on an estate which starlings had previously frequented in very large flocks.

(8) Owing to the higher percentage of infection and its wider migrations, the starling is here considered as a more effective distributor of the disease than turkeys. Other wild birds, such as pheasants, thrushes, rooks and jays, also play a part in spreading the gapeworm and the disease this worm causes.

During investigations on the Eelworm of Potatoes in south Lincolnshire during the summer of 1925 it was found that fields shewing great variation in the extent of damage done to the crop did not have a corresponding variation in the number of eelworm cysts present. It was often observed that patches where plants were doing well shewed as many cysts in the soil and on the roots as those areas where damage was most pronounced. This seemed to suggest that eelworms might not be the primary cause of the failure but a contributory factor.

Owing to the fact that other pests, chiefly fungoid, were invariably present in addition to eelworm it seemed that one might either attribute the failure of the crop to various pests, or to some factor or factors connected with soil fertility which inhibited the proper growth of the plants and reduced their resistance to disease. In order to obtain data which might throw some light on this latter suggestion, a number of fields reported to have failing potato crops were visited and as far as possible the history of the cropping, manuring and general cultivation was obtained. Soil samples from different parts of the fields were brought back to the Laboratory at the Kirton Agricultural Institute for the estimation of the cyst content.

In 1865, Leuckart described from the stomach of the domestic cat, a minute bursate worm which he named Ollulanus tricuspis. His original description was somewhat scanty, but it was amplified in later years (1867–1876). As this work is scattered throughout many pages, the following is a brief resumé of Leuckart's theory.

He was struck by the fact, that being viviparous in habit, it resembled Trichinella spiralis, but recognised that several fundamental differences existed between them. Ollulanus never produced more than three larvae at a time from relatively large eggs, about 60μ to 120μ long; whereas Trichinella produced numerous larvae with small eggs about 35μ long. He found what he believed were the free larvae of Ollulanus, which measured about 320μ long by 15μ wide, had a truncated oral extremity and a short tail which ended in a short S-shaped tip (Fig. 1, a). The oesophagus was between one third and one half of the total length of the intestine; several transparent vesicles could be seen at its clubshaped posterior extremity. Although there are seldom more than three embryos inside the female, larvae were usually, found in large numbers throughout the whole intestinal tract of the host, as well as encysted (in cysts ·15 to ·2 mm. in diameter) on various internal organs. The cyst wall had a connective tissue-like structure of such thickness that it might be three or four times the diameter of the enclosed space.

This parasite was first reported by Cobbold in 1882 from a donkey and described by him two years later under the name of Strongylus arnfieldi. Previously, worms from the lungs of equines had been reported by Diesing and by Gurlt, but these had been confused with the species found in bovines. This species was later identified in the horse by Railliet. It was placed in its present genus by Railliet and Henry in 1907.

Rudolphi (1819) first described a nematode from the intestine of Iguana tuberculata under the title, Ascaris megatyphlon. Since then considerable progress has been made in our knowledge of the parasitic Nematodes and most of the forms described by Rudolphi under Ascaris have been placed in new genera. Dujardin (1845) re-examined these forms and created a new genus, Ozolaimus, for Ascaris megatyphlon and removed certain other forms to the genus Oxyuris. He differentiated the two genera of Oxyuris and Ozolaimus by the presence of two simple lips in Ozolaimus and three simple or lobed lips in Oxyuris.

In some investigations on skin penetration by the filariform larvæ of Strongyloides (Goodey, 1925), the writer made use of larvæ cultivated from the droppings of a Guinea Baboon, Papio papio, which had died at the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London. Scrapings of the lining of the small intestine of this animal were made so as to secure the parasitic worms of which 25 specimens were obtained. A study of these was undertaken because von Linstow's (1905) original description of the species is so slender and his figures illustrating it are so crude that it was considered that the parasite would repay further investigation. Moreover one or two of his statements as, for example, that the cuticle of the parasite females is unstriated, required critical examination. Again in a recent paper Chandler (1925) has thrown doubt on the specific identity of S. fülleborni, suggesting that it is probably a hostal variety of S. papillosus. For these reasons the present paper has been prepared in that it gives a fuller account of S. fülleborni both in the parasitic and in the free-living generation than has hitherto been available. The writer considers that a detailed and well illustrated account of the morphology of S. papillosus, particularly of the free-living, sexual generation, is much needed at the present time.