96                            Piroplasma Bovis.

examine the blood repeatedly before finding the Trypanosomes
or Piroplasma.

In the blood of cattle suffering from Piroplasmosis one or
two days before death or immediately after death, numerous
free flagella are frequently to be found.

These forms (Plate C a) are difficult to distinguish in the
fresh blood, but can easily be studied in stained films. They
very much resemble the free forms described by Bowhill and
Lignières. They vary in length from less than half the
diameter of a blood corpuscle to 3 times this length. At one
or both ends, is a slight protuberance in which a cromatin
staining body can often be detected. Numbers of these
flagella can be seen free, moving in the field, others appear to
be entering blood corpuscles, while others seem to be leaving
or to be attached to degenerated and breaking down red cells
A mononuclear leucocyte is shown (Plate C a) which has the
appearance of having taken up several flagella, the ends of
these bodies protruding from the margin of the cell.

The shorter forms bear a strong resemblance to the bacil-
lary bodies observed in the blood corpuscle of cattle suffering
from a chronic or latent form of Piroplasmosis (Plate C a).
This resemblance suggests a possible explanation of these
bacillary forms of Piroplasmosis. In the same blood in
which the flagella were found, the amœboid form of the
Piroplasma and free ring shapes were fairly numerous.

The significance of these flagella is a matter of conjecture.
I have not been able to trace their origin or their function;
Lignière's view that they were simple prolongations of the
Protoplasm of the globules is not probable.

It is very possible that many of the flagellated forms des-
cribed by various authors may be regarded as pseudopodia of
the amœboid stage of the parasite. Several of the illustrations
given by Nuttall and Graham Smith (7) support this view.

The more attractive theory is to regard these free flagella
as mikrogametes similar to the spermoids of the hæmatozoa
of Laveran. Hunt, Doffein, Nuttall and Graham Smith have
considered them from this point of view.

Hunt (8) described crescents in the blood of cattle suffering
from Texas Fever. He observed their change into spheroidal