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®n eome Common Speclee of the (5ama0i^a^ 



By Lieut.-Colonel L. Blathwayt, F.L.S.^ 

 Plate IX. 



I]\IUST offer a sort of apology for this paper, which is much 

 less comprehensive than some months ago I had hoped to 

 have made it. I fully expected to have been able to say 

 something of the Gamasi in all their stages of egg, larva, nymph, 

 and adult ; but regret that it is only in the nymphal state that I as 

 yet possess any knowledge of them. 



Knowing that merely capturing and examining specimens 

 would be of little use, I determined to try and keep the Gamasi 

 in confinement so as to learn something, if possible, of their life- 

 history. It would have been comparatively easy to have kept 

 them in large glasses or jars with plenty of damp vegetable 

 matter ; but I could not then have examined them properly, and 

 should have lost sight entirely of individual specimens. 



On the 1 6th November, I caught a number of Gamasi belong- 

 ing to three different species, on a Geotritpes stercorarius, and 

 confined twenty-five in twelve small glass cells about half-an-inch 

 in diameter. In the bottom of each cell I placed a piece of wet 

 blotting-paper and a small piece of moss, besides which they had 

 to be fed. Since that day — i6th November — I have devoted 

 about an hour daily to examining these creatures, and have kept a 

 regular diary for each, except on three occasions, when I allowed 

 a day to pass without attending to them, with the result that 

 several died. One or two have been accidentally killed by the 

 glass cover falling upon them when trying to escape ; but thirteen 

 are still alive and flourishing. 



From what I could gather from writers who have treated of the 

 Gamasi, I had good reason to believe that two months and a-half 

 would be ample time for them to go through all their stages, die, 

 and leave behind them a second generation; but in this I have 

 been disappointed, for beyond growing fatter none have under- 

 gone any change whatever, and, except when crushed or dried 

 up, none have died. 



* Paper read before the Bath Microscopical Society February 5th, 1889. 



