88 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 22, NO. 5, MAY, 1920 



Buffalo Bayou, 8 miles below Houston, Tex., October 20, 1918, 

 Barber, 3 specimens. 



Mr. Snyder, an able student of Termites, suggests that it may 

 be possible that some of these supposed nymphs may be brachyp- 

 terous reproductive adults, similar to certain forms present in 

 Termites. But microtome sections of several specimens made by 

 Miss C. B. Thompson. Prof, of Zoology in Wellesley College, have 

 not substantiated this supposition. 



Apterous Unchitinized Adult. (Fig. 4.) 



This is the form, and the only form, of Zorotypus hubbardi dis- 

 cussed in the original account and description of this species, the 

 two specimens mentioned in that paper as probably male nymphs 

 being really adult females. 



Mention was made in this former pape'r to certain pigmented 

 lateral spots on the head of this form, seen in a couple of speci- 

 mens mounted on a slide. Since that note was written Miss 

 Thompson sectioned the head of this form with the view to de- 

 termining if there really were vestigial eyes present or not. 

 Her decision is set forth in the following quotation from a letter 

 written by her to Mr. T. E. Snyder: 



"There are no functional compound eyes nor ocelli. In some specimens 

 nothing is left of the compound eyes but the optic nerve running to a mass 

 of fatty tissue just the size of the eyes in the dealated form, but in one speci- 

 men in among the fatty tissue there were vestiges of the outer parts of 

 several ommatidia, the cones and cuticle. So we may call this, together 

 with the optic nerves present in all specimens, evidence of faint vestiges of a 

 very degenerate compound eye." 



The general appearance of this apterous form is well represented 

 by Fig. 4. This represents a female and, like the other figures 

 illustrating the present paper, except Fig. o, was drawn by Mrs. 

 Mary Carmody Thompson. As indicated by this figure, there 

 is probably one more abdominal segment than stated in the 

 original account of the species, the terminal segment, however, 

 being illy defined. An examination of the somewhat ample ma- 

 terial accumulated since the previous account of this insect was 

 written shows some variation to exist in the ventral armature of 

 the posterior femora; rarely there are no chitinized spines on the 

 ventral inner margin of these femora; in such cases the specimens 

 may be ones but recently transformed and killed before completely 

 chitinized. But usually there are two chitinized spines on this 

 margin, as described in the former paper, and sometimes there is 

 a third somewhat smaller spine situated about midway between 

 the base of the femora and the basal one of the other two spines, 

 and rarely there are also a few very short spines between the longer 

 ones and distad of the apical ones. 



