6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



of the family being apparently that of the entomologist Rouget.* The 

 family has, moreover, received attention from a zoological point of 

 view, the genus of Vermes, Arthrorhynchus, having been founded by 

 Kolenati f on species parasitic upon Nycterihia (Dipterous parasites 

 of bats). 



The members of the family may be briefly described as consisting 

 usually of a main subclavate, flattened body, which for lack of a better 

 term may be called the receptacle ; simple, made up of a few large 

 cells and bearing at its distal end one or more perithecia ; or com- 

 pound, the divisions bearing solitary perithecia. Within the perithe- 

 cia, asci are developed by successive sprouting from basal initial cells. 

 The asci contain apparently eight spores, although this number has 

 been definitely observed in a single species only. The spores, which 

 are hyaline, usually fusiform, once septate, and more or less involved 

 in mucus, are expelled through the elastic apical pore of the peri- 

 thecium, the ascus wall, as in other well known instances, disappear- 

 ing before the discharge takes place. The spores become attached 

 by one extremity to th^ surface of the host, and by subsequent division 

 produce a new individual, without forming hyphjB or a mycelium of 

 any sort. The point by which the spore is attached becomes modified 

 into a dark, horny-looking piece, which penetrates the chitinous integu- 

 ment of the insect, and forms the single medium of nutrition as well 

 as of attachment. 



In addition to the perithecium certain other bodies, bearing a defi- 

 nite relation to it, are always present, borne usually on the receptacle 

 close beside the perithecium ; in two genera {Helminthophana and Can- 

 tharomyees) arising near the base of the receptacle. These bodies, or 

 appendages, have been called paraphyses, or better pseudoparapJnjses ; 

 and are of great morphological as well as systematic importance, vary- 

 ing greatly in the different genera and species. Although certain of 

 these appendages are usually sterile, there seems no reasonable doubt 

 that one of them, at least, is always functional as an antheridium, or 

 more commonly bears certain organs which are functional as antheridia. 

 From these Karsten has observed the production of bodies which he 

 considers antherozoids ; but confirmatory observations, other than his 

 own, are lacking. 



In Laboulhenia, the only genus which the writer has been able to 

 examine with any thoroughness in its different stages, the supposed 



* Ann. d. 1. Soc. Entomol. d. France, Tom. VIII. p. 21 (1850), sec. Robin, 

 t Wiener Entomol. Monatschrift, 1857, Band I. p. 06, sec. Peyritsch. 



