body wall. As the segments at the older end mature, each becomes full of germs, and the segments become detached and pass out of the canal, to be dropped and perhaps picked up by an herbivorous animal and repeat the life cycle.
The trichina is more dangerous to human life than the tapeworm. It gets into the food canal in uncooked pork (bologna sausage, for example), multiplies there, migrates into the muscles, causing great pain, and encysts there, remaining until the death of the host. It is believed to get into the bodies of hogs again when they eat rats, which in turn have obtained the cysts from carcasses.
Summary of the Biological Process.—An earthworm is a living machine which does work (digging and crawling; seizing, swallowing, and digesting food; pumping blood; growing and reproducing). To do the work it must have a continual supply of energy. The energy for its work is set free by the protoplasm (in its microscopic cells) undergoing a destructive chemical change (oxidation). The waste products from the breaking down of the protoplasm must be continually removed (excretion). The broken-down protoplasm must be continually replaced if life is to continue (the income must exceed the outgo if the animal is still growing). The microscopic cells construct more protoplasm out of food and oxygen (assimilation) supplied them by the processes of nutrition (eating, digesting, breathing, circulating). This protoplasm in turn oxidizes and releases more energy to do work, and thus the cycle of life proceeds.
