54 JOURNAL OF THE [April, 



There used to be a doggerel proverb among si)orling men, — 

 "The feathers and the hair 

 Make many a man swear." 

 It is well that verbal utterance is denied to the beasts and the 

 birds. It' it were not, surely the miseries inflicted on them by 

 man and the Mallophaga would evoke maledictions enough to 

 raise one's hair. 



Of the several genera of these pests of the bird is one named 

 Fhilopterus, a word which Keems to mean a lover of the flying- 

 race. Evidently, it must be by way of irony that this torment- 

 ing creature is set down as a lover of the birds ! This parasite, 

 the Fhilopterus, more accurately described, is a lover of feathers ; 

 and, like the expert house-wife, it recognizes and prefers " live 

 feathers ;" for immediately after the death of its host the Pliilop- 

 terus deserts its feathery home, both bed and board. 



On the 3cth day of January last, a crow just shot was brought 

 to my house. It was infested with vermin, of which the slide 

 exhibited this evening contains two specimens. They differ 

 very much in size. The larger one I set down as Philoptents 

 Corvi. I am not sure that the smaller one is of the same species. 

 Besides that of size it has other differences, notably the curious 

 development of hair on each side of its head, which is lacking 

 in the larger one. A pedicelled egg behind the abdomen indi- 

 cates that it is of the female sex ; but, then, bearded ladies are 

 not often found outside of "Dime Museums." The discrepancy 

 of size is very marked, and generally, when this is so pronounced 

 between two mature individual insects of the same species, the 

 one of the lesser pro|)ortions is the male. However, one meets 

 problems like this constantly, and in the pursuit of entomology 

 the perplexed student is often compelled to admit, " It beats 

 the boys ! " 



