Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

i86
ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY
specimen of this large Octopus alive on the shore in the bay to the
east of Blackness Castle. I had previously seen a dead individual
of this same species in the same locality on 28th October 1898, also
after a heavy gale. ROBERT GODFREY, Edinburgh.
Platyarthrus hoffmanseg'g'ii, Brandt^ in Fife. On i4th June
(1900) I had the good luck to find this rare terrestrial Isopod in
some numbers in nests of the common ashy-black ant, Formica fit sea,
under stones on a sunny bank between Inverkeithing and St. David's,
Fife. Like a number of other creatures that live in ants' nests, it is
white and blind. The only previously recorded locality for this
little " Woodlouse " in Scotland seems to be Banffshire, where it
was found by Thomas Edward. It forms an interesting addition to
Mr. Thomas Scott's List of "The Land and Fresh- water Crustacea
of the District around Edinburgh" ("Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc.," 1890-
91). WILLIAM EVANS, Edinburgh.
On the Occurrence of Diphyllobothrium stemmacephalum,
Cobbold, in the Intestines of a Porpoise. A Porpoise (Phoecena
com/minis} was recently cast up on the beach at Bay of Nigg, near
Aberdeen. On making an examination of the viscera of this
Cetacean, several specimens of a Cestode were observed, but it is
doubtful if
any of them were perfect. The anterior ends of the
specimens are extremely attenuated, and the head is
very small.
Only two or three, however, have the head intact. Though the
anterior end is
very attenuated, the rest of the animal is of the
usual "tape "-like form a form which has given to these creatures
the name of tapeworms. The two largest of the specimens, after
having been for some time immersed in a saturated solution of
corrosive sublimate, measured each eight feet in length, with an
average width of nearly half an inch. The intestines of the Porpoise
were in one or two places considerably distended by the crowding
together of the Cestodes, and, one would fancy, must have caused
more or less discomfort to their unfortunate host. Only the one
kind of Entozoon was observed, and it
agrees so well with Dr.
Cobbold's description of DipJiyllobothrium stemmacephalum that
there can be no doubt about it
being that species. Sexually-mature
tapeworms do not appear to be very plentiful in the Cetacea, at least
as regards number of species, though individually they may be
more common. Dr. Cobbold, in his " Treatise on the Entozoa of
Man and Animals," published in 1879, mentions only two species
the one referred to above, and Tetrabothrium triangulare, Diesing,
found in Delphinus rostratus.
Diphyllobothrium stemmacephalum was described by Dr. Cobbold
in the "Transactions of the Linnean Society," vol. xvii. p. 167. He
also gives a short description of the species with three figures
in the
text in the " Treatise " just referred to, and states that four of the