264 A. D. MICHAEL ON A SPECIES OF GAMASUS. 



panion, I found a flask-shaped, rather egg-like object, semi- 

 transparent and rather opalescent, adhering to both mandibles, 

 and placed between the mandibles near the bases of the 

 chela3. I at first thought it was some accident, so I sepa- 

 rated two or three more, and in each instance found exactly 

 the same thing. It then struck me that, although it seemed 

 highly improbable, yet it was just possible that it might 

 be a poison-sack ; the position at the base of the movable 

 chela being suspiciously like that in the spider, although it 

 was not likely that the sack would be outside, unless it were 

 temporarily distended and afterwards retracted. It also seemed 

 improbable that the male would be killing the female ; but as 

 the converse readily takes place with spiders, it was not im- 

 possible. To decide this question, I firstly separated a male 

 Gamasus from a beetle larvae which it was killing, but there 

 was not any object between the mandibles. I repeated this 

 several times, but always with the same result. Finally, I 

 examined numerous mandibles under different circumstances, 

 but did not ever find the object between the mandibles, except 

 in the cases where the coitus had been disturbed, and then I 

 invariably found it ; the object being attached to both man- 

 dibles, so that it could not be withdrawn into either, and should 

 show at ordinary times, whereas the mandibles were usually 

 quite clean and detached, without any trace of a tie between 

 them. I now accidentally separated a pair in which I suspect 

 that the coitus had only just commenced, and here I did not 

 find anything on the mandibles ; but I found a precisely similar 

 flask-shaped object emerging from the genital aperture of the 

 male ; the glutinous matter around it dried, and it remained 

 attached there. I now dissected a male, and found in the 

 hinder part of the body, but communicating with the genital 

 opening, two large sacs filled with these flask-shaped objects. 

 The flasks themselves always showed a granular mass inside, 

 and when this was extracted by any means it broke up into 

 what had the appearance of the motionless semen common 

 amongst the males of the Acarina. My conclusion from all 

 this was that, in the present species at all events, the male 

 semen is enclosed in masses, in large capsules or spermatophores, 

 which are stored in what answers to Neeclham's sac in the 

 Cephalopoda, and are extruded singly, and applied to the genital 

 organ of the female by the singular mandibles of the male, 



