A. D. MICHAEL ON GLYCIPHAGUS PALMIFER. 31 



tliese genera are parasitic on bats ; but the parasites of bats are not 

 the only mites that have the imbricated hair, as I find it even more 

 stronsrly marked on the hairs on the legs of some of the rarer 

 Cheyleti; then in Glyciphagus we have the plumose hair, either 

 slightly so, as in G. cursor or G. spinipes, or almost forming a 

 plume, as in G. plumiger ; and lastly we have the present species, 

 which seems to show the transition of hairs into scales. 



In G. palmifer the hairs along the edge of the body are developed 

 into what Murray calls " pennate, transparent, spatulate plumes," 

 which, however, I prefer to call leaf-like expansions. These stand 

 out from the edge of the body and curve slightly downwards ; 

 there is a thickened mid-rib, or, so to speak, a quill, from which 

 lateral nervures run to the thickened margin of the leaf. These 

 nervures sometimes go straight from the mid-rib to the margin, and 

 sometimes divide into two or three before reaching it. The edge 

 of the leaf is thickened, forming a rim all round, from the exterior 

 of which spring a number of short, strong spines, not continuous 

 with the nervures, but more numerous, and set at a different angle. 

 There is also a double row of similar spines down the mid-rib 

 diverging. The mid-rib is joined to the nervures and rim by a 

 transparent membrane. Each hair is set in the usual way into a 

 little projection or papilla of the body, the mid-rib only running in 

 like a quill ; this I have seen best by polarised light, with a blue 

 selenite, when the mid-rib — even that part within the body — assumes 

 a brilliant metallic green, and is very conspicuous. The leaf-like 

 hairs are very different in the male and female, those of the female 

 being shorter and broader, and more leaf-like, than those of the 

 male ; but there are two plumes not far from the anus in the 

 female resembling those of the male. A drawing of one of the leaf- 

 like hairs of the female, highly magnified, is given (fig. 3). 



At each side of the back, a short way from the posterior margin, 

 is a single leaf-like hair (in the female) which, in the male, is 

 replaced by a very long plumose bristle, standing out transversely, 

 and which Robin and Fumose draw as turning sharply round at a 

 right angle about one-third of the distance from the tip, and Murray 

 copies it thus ; in spite of the ability of Mr. Murray, from whom 

 one differs with great hesitation, I have not liked to draw it so, as 

 it has not been so in any of the numerous specimens which I have 

 seen alive ; and it appears to me that Robin and Fumose did not 

 intend it as a fact, the hair being bent conspicuously in order to get 

 it into the plate, fur which it would otherwise be too long. This 



