44 Bulletin Wisconsin Natural History Society. [Vol. 9, Nos. 1-2. 



serves for the extrusion of the eggs and excretory products. He 

 furthermore suggests that the eggs may then be eaten by the 

 feather lice (Mallophaga) which infest all birds, or by some of 

 the insects which live parasitically in the birds' nests, and that 

 it is among these that the intermediate host should be sought. So 

 far as I am able to learn, nothing more definite than this pertain- 

 ing to the life history of this organism occurs in the literature. 



If the life history of the species involves only the possible 

 intermediate hosts mentioned above, the parasite going directly 

 from its primary host to the intermediate and back again, it would 

 seem that its life cycle were fairly safeguarded, and that the 

 species should be more common. Willemoes-Suhm ( 1873. p. 335) 

 recognized this fact and remarked on the infrequent and sporadic 

 appearance of the adult parasite. His specimens, as stated above, 

 were obtained on a wheatear, which he procured in the bird 

 market of Genoa, and although this dealer handled and examined 

 daily a large number of small birds, in no other case was the 

 parasite found. A taxidermist in .Munich, whom Willemoes- 

 Suhm interested in the matter, examined many birds during 

 three years with no better success. 



Railliet (1898) gives a list of ten passerine birds from which 

 the species has been recorded, all of them of small size. The list 

 includes representatives of the families Fringillidw ( including the 

 canary), Turidce, Sylviidce, Motacillidw, Paridw and Sturnidw 

 (the starling). To these he adds an eleventh,-"' a jay (Garrulus 

 glandularis Vieill.) belonging to the Corvidce. Including his 

 record, the parasite was then known from Austria, Switzerland, 

 Germany, Italy and France. It has apparently not, previously to 

 the present, been reported from the United States, 6 and its 



5) Braun (1893, p. S77) gives Monostoma faba as occurring on 13 

 species of birds and when synonyms are eliminated it leaves about the 

 same number cited by Stiles and Hassall (1908). 



6) Stiles and Hassell (1908, p. 312) include in their list of the hosts 

 of Monostoma faba the bluejay (Gyanocitta cristata), which is a strictly 

 American bird. Since, however, they have not included the French jay 

 (Garrulus glandularis) reported by Raillet, it is possible that this is a slip. 



[Since the foregoing was written, I have learned that Dr. Hassell 

 found Monostoma faba on a specimen of Cyanocitta cristata collected in Mary- 

 land in 1908. The record was published nowhere except in Stiles and 

 Hassell (1908) as mentioned above. 



Through the kindness of Dr. B. H. Ransom, Chief of the Zoological 

 Division of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, I am, furthermore, 

 able to report that the Bureau has a hitherto unpublished record of 

 Monostoma faba on an English Sparrow sent in from Ripon, Wisconsin, 

 by Prof. C. S. Millliken, in August, 1907. — L. J. C] 



