ON BRITISH HYDRACHXIDS. 255 



swimming-hairs on the legs, which are such an important feature 

 in some species. 



Notes. -There were a large number of notes and short papers 

 on the water-mites, giving localities where found, notes on, and 

 differences in, species, the time of capture, ova deposition, and of 

 escape of larvae ; also several attempts at classification. A long 

 paper of about sixty sheets, forming an introduction to the 

 whole subject,* was nearly completed by the author for publica- 

 tion. I will now give a list of the mites in the collection, 

 using the nomenclature of the present time, with the dates 

 when the species was first named, when and where found 

 by Saville-Kent, together with notes on the embryology I have 

 copied from his notes. At the time Saville-Kent was collecting 

 water-mites, the great work he had to depend on for identifying 

 the species was Koch's Deutschlands CvKstaceen : Myrio'poden unci 

 Arachniden, 1835-41 a very fine work with beautiful little 

 figures, but a great many of the names are wrong ; some were 

 named from nymphs and then named again as adults ; some, 

 again, were given specific names on account of differences in 

 colour. All this caused a certain amount of confusion, which 

 has, I hope, been cleared up by now. Piersig, Koenike, Sig 

 Thor, Wolcott, and others who have done all they can to place 

 the nomenclature and classification of the Hvdrachnidae on a 

 firm basis, hiid not begun to make their researches known, hence 

 a number of specific names used by Saville-Kent have been 

 altered to those now in use. It is quite possible that had all 

 the slides been in a good state of preservation I should have 

 found more than the fifty species here given, because Saville- 

 Kent certainly gives more than fifty names. But, basing his 

 work on Koch, he had sometimes given more than one name to 

 the same mite ; and, again, in the genus Eidais he had named 

 two distinct species as one. However that may be, it is a very 

 good list, and, although rather late, it is only right and fitting that 

 it should be published in honour of a well-known naturalist who, 

 had he lived, would have given us a fine Monograph on our 

 British water-mites. 



* See p. 261. 



