127 



genera without species, and there were often considerable doubts as to their 

 accuracy. He thought that some sort of sub-committee might perhaps be 

 appointed to carry out the suggestion, and thereby l^ey might be better 

 able to fulfil one of the objects for which the Club was originally started. 

 It would not only be of interest to know what things were to be found in 

 the districts visited, but it was of great importance to ascertain how 

 far the same things were found in different years in the same localities. 



Mr, Michael said it appeared to him that nothing was a greater waste of 

 time than for a man to go out and collect a lot of things of various kinds, 

 and then to attempt to identify all he had found. He might spend days in 

 identifying an object, and find, after all, that he had only got something 

 well known to others. Unless, therefore, the things found could be classi- 

 fied and handed over to specialists who were competent to " spot " a new 

 thing amongst them directly, he was afraid very little practical value would 

 come of the matter, 



Mr. White said that the first difficulty which met them was that they got 

 all sorts of things mixed up together, and it was often most difficult to 

 separate them. 



The following communication from Mr. J. G. Tatem to Mr. Curties, de- 

 scribing the large specimen of Flea presented to the Cabinet of the Club, 

 was read by Mr. Ingpen : — 



" In begging you to offer for the acceptance of the Quekett Club, and for 

 deposit in its Cabinet the large Flea I send you, it is as well that it should 

 be accompanied by such information as I am able to give concerning it. 



" It was taken dead and almost decomposed from the fur of a ferret which 

 had been dug from a rabbit-hole at Harpenden, near St. Albans, and has 

 been in my possession since 1869. It is a species certainly very little 

 known, and, is, I believe, as yet unnamed and undescribed, no notice of it 

 being obtainable from either text book or periodical, so far as I am aware. 



'* Mr. Champion, however, exhibited at the Entomological Society's meet- 

 ing on the 3rd of February, 1873, a large species of Pidex, taken by Mr. 

 T. Walker in a mouse's nest, in the Isle of Sheppy, but no further reference 

 to it occurs in the Society's Transactions. The Rev. W. Locock commu- 

 nicated to the December number of " Science Gossip " the capture of 

 another large flea on a mole at Clifton, seeking information in regard to it. 

 Now, these large fleas may be, and probably are, identical with my speci- 

 men, but without comparison or exact description of them there can be no 

 certainty in the matter. 



** Three years ago, a former female servant, residing at Nettlebed, Oxon, 

 calling here, ' so regretted that she could not bring me the very large flea 

 which hopped from her dress that morning, but which she could not catch,* 

 calling it the ' grass flea,* and stating ' that it was not uncommon in her 

 neighbourhood on the hay- makers while in the fields,' and adding, ' that it 

 did not bite.' A liberal reward offered each year since, has, however, 

 failed to procure me a single example. 



" Accepting this information as correct, and applying to our subject, and 

 seeing that it has (in all probability) been already met with on more than 

 JODRN. Q, M. C, No. 44, L 



