Queries and Answers. 95 



rous in the salt water than in the fresh. In the Dictionnaire 

 des Sciences Naturelles, M. Blainville has described about 

 forty species that were formerly included under the term 

 Lernae'a, but are now divided into several genera : see the 

 last edition of Cuvier's Regne Animal, torn iii. p. 255. et seq. ; 

 and Desmarest, p. 343. et seq., note. Five species of Lernae'a 

 are described and figured in Shaw's Naturalist's Miscellany, 

 vol. viii. p. 296., pi. 295., and four others described in Pen- 

 nant's British Zoology, vol. vi. p. 113. The particular species 

 which attaches itself to the sprat is figured in Sowerby's British 

 Miscellany, plate 68. ; and a full description by Dr. Grant, 

 with a magnified representation of a large species which has 

 been found firmly fixed to the cornea of a shark, is inserted 

 in vol. vii. of the Edinburgh Journal of Science. 



The Lernae^ae, although numerous, form but a very small 

 proportion of those parasitic pests with which the various 

 animals of almost every class are infested. So numerous, 

 indeed, are they, that nearly every species bearing a parasite 

 has been found to maintain one peculiar to itself, which feeds 

 on the excreted matters of the skin, or sucks the vital fluids 

 from the interior. The natural history of many is well 

 known, and the various animals distinctly classed ; but the 

 internal structure, and the mode of generation in the Lernae v ae, 

 and even the place which they occupy in the scale of animals, 

 are still undetermined. Their external forms are as various 

 as they are remarkable, and appear to exhibit in the same 

 individual a combination of the characters of the entozoa, and 

 of insects : possessing the soft body of the former, with rudi- 

 ments of antennae peculiar to the latter. Like intestinal 

 worms, they have a simple structure, with a soft and naked 

 body, and are permanently fixed upon the animal. This 

 latter circumstance led to a supposition that the sexes were 

 united in the same individual ; but it has also been suggested 

 that the males of the Lernae v ae, like the males of some other 

 parasitic animals, whose economy is better understood, swim 

 freely to and fro in the water, and that it is the females only 

 which attach themselves. — S. T. P. 



Acorn-eating Qurculionidce at Philipsburg, in Pennsylvania. 

 — Our correspondent R. C. Taylor (Vol. V. p. 456.) sent us, 

 in October, 1831, some acorns off two species of oak which 

 grow on the Alleghany Mountains, and which at Philipsburg 

 are called the white oak and the red oak. The acorns were 

 desperately infested with the larvae, large ones, of some kind 

 or kinds of Curculionidae ; and we register this fact, that on 

 its meeting his eye, he may put things in train for granting 

 our request for a supply of perfect specimens of this or these 



