HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



39 



birds, such as the turtle dove, wood pigeon, hoopoe, 

 flycatcher, pipits, skylark, starling, red-wing, lap- 

 wing, golden plover, &c. We have arrivals of birds 

 from the north to spend the winter here before all 

 our summer visitants leave for the south. — Win. C. 

 Tail, Foz do Douro, Oporto. 



House-flies and their Parasites. — There can 

 I think be little doubt that the parasite described by 

 the Rev. W. Marsden Beeby was the young nymph 

 of one of the Gamasinre, which species or genus it 

 would not be possible to say from the description, 

 nor indeed are the genera and species of this family 

 well settled. With regard to the question of whether 

 the creatures are parasitic, or rather to what extent 

 they are so, this is still a subject on which opinions 

 differ ; the older writers considered that many species 

 were parasitic in all stages, but the researches of 

 modern French acarologists make it probable that 

 they are only parasitic in the larval stage, and in the 

 active asexual stage which is called the nymph. M. 

 Megnin, whose opinion deserves the highest possible 

 consideration on such a subject, considers that the 

 parasite is not in any way injurious to the fly, and 

 only uses the fly, or other insect or creature, as a 

 means of conveyance. I confess, however, that my 

 own observations of the positions in which the nymphs 

 of gamasids are found upon dipterous and hymeno- 

 pterous insects would rather have led me to the 

 conclusion that, at all events in some species, the 

 gamasid seeks nourishment from the juices of the 

 insect. The instruments resembling the large claws 

 of a lobster would be the chelate mandibles of the 

 Gamasus. These resemble the large claws (or chelae) 

 of the lobster and craw-fish, inasmuch as they are 

 chelate, i. e. nipper-like, the fixed side of the nipper 

 being formed by a toothed prolongation of the penul- 

 timate joint of the chelate limb or organ, and the 

 movable side by the ultimate joint, which is drawn by 

 powerful muscles against the prolongation of the 

 penultimate. These mandibles, however, are not, like 

 the lobster's claw, hard throughout their whole length ; 

 the two final joints only are hard, the posterior ones 

 being elastic and extensible at will, so that the man- 

 dibles can be greatly protruded or wholly withdrawn 

 within the body of the gamasid, nor can they probably 

 be considered to be the true homologues of the 

 lobster's claws, as these appear to be the appendages 

 of the ninth cephalo-thoracic somite, and to constitute 

 the anterior and prehensile pair of the ambulatory 

 legs, whereas in the gamasid they are true mandibles. 

 I confess that Mr. Beeby's description of the teeth 

 made me somewhat hesitate as to whether the parasite 

 was really a gamasid, as I am not aware of any mouth 

 organs in Gamasinae which can properly be called 

 teeth. The mouth consists of the labium and maxilla;, 

 which together form a suctorial sharp-pointed tube, 

 of the mandibles above mentioned, a labium or lingua, 

 and of a pair of maxillary palpi. At the base of 



these, however, is an organ somewhat corresponding 

 to the galea in Orthoptera, and this may possibly bear 

 spines in some species. Finally, I may say that the 

 acarid would not have remained long on the fly's 

 foot ; if left alone he would soon have mounted into 

 some more convenient position on the body. If it 

 were not for size, Mr. Beeby's description would 

 answer equally well for a chelifer (say, such an one as 

 Hermann's C. parasita, "Memoire apterologique," 

 p. 117); indeed the pedipalpi of the chelifer are even 

 more like lobsters' claws than the mandibles of the 

 gamasid, but I presume that one of these well-known 

 creatures would have been at once recognised. It is 

 of course extremely easy to distinguish between the 

 two, as the abdomen of the chelifer is segmented, 

 while that of the gamasid is not. — Albert D. Michael. 



"A Rare Species of Hemiptera." — Would it 

 be possible to obtain from " John Davis " (the writer 

 of the article headed " A Rare Species of Hemiptera," 

 p. 9) an example of the creature which he describes ? 

 This I admit has fairly puzzled me. His calling it 

 both a hemipterous insect and afterwards a " beetle " 

 or a coleopterous insect is decidedly peculiar. — C. 0. 

 IVaterkonse. 



Birds and Fruit. — On December 23, whilst 

 taking a country walk, I was surprised to see a haw- 

 thorn tree which grew up out of the hedge, laden 

 with the following birds : — fieldfare, missel-thrush, 

 song-thrush, blackbird, and green linnet. The 

 bush had been evidently richly laden with scarlet 

 haws, and the ground was covered with those which 

 had been shaken off whilst the half-starving birds 

 were feeding. I concealed myself and watched the 

 birds I had disturbed return to their banquet. There 

 could hardly have been less than a hundred indivi- 

 duals, and the voracity with which they devoured the 

 tempting berries was both amusing and gratifying. 

 The remarks of Dr. Taylor, in that chapter of his 

 recently published "Flowers; their Shapes, Per- 

 fumes, and Colours," relating to " Birds and Flowers," 

 that the red or other colours of fruits are for the sake 

 of attracting birds, just as the colours of petals are to 

 attract insects, came to my mind with great force. 

 In this way one could see how useful both the colour 

 and the succulent pericarp must be to seeds protected 

 by "stone" and pericarps in distributing the seeds 

 far and wide in the droppings of the birds. During 

 my walk I afterwards saw the blackbirds and thrushes 

 devouring the scarlet berries of the holly in a similar 

 way. — T. G. Hudson, Wolverhampton. 



The Weather and the Birds.— The incoming 

 of severe wintry weather at the beginning of De- 

 cember had been foreshadowed to the ornithologist 

 by the large numbers of northern birds which visited 

 our shores. Flocks of snow-buntings, as well as 

 northern ducks (as the "long-tailed"), wax- wings, 

 &c, visited the eastern coasts. The fieldfares have 



