26 EAST KENT NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



John Davy. And this important physiological character, now 

 extended to the Acarina, though not yet recognised in the books of 

 the zoological taxonomy, should fine a place there. The same holds 

 good oi Argas (described as British in the ' Quart. Journ. Micro. 

 Sci.,' April, 1S72), in which species the urinary granules are 

 opaque, white, smooth, shining, concentrically striated, more or 

 less globular or oval, with an average diameter of TuVctli of ^n 

 inch, and often two partly fused together. They present a truly 

 beautiful microscopic spectacle, especially when examined in 

 clusters within the urinary tubes. In Ixodes the urinary granules 

 are not so large and remarkable as in Argas. The urinary tubes 

 in both commence by a blind and sub-clavate extremity at the 

 fore part of the body, and proceed tortuously backwards to open 

 into the last portion of the intestine, where is a bilobed sac, — a 

 sort of urinary bladder, most distinct in A.rgas. 



Feet aiid Progression against Gravity. — The smaller specimens 

 of these ticks may be often seen crawling, like flies and some 

 other insects, up and under the sides of polished surfaces. This 

 is done by means of the caruncles, one of which is situated 

 between each of the pair of hooked and terminal claws, on tlieir 

 concave side. When the creature has the claws free, each 

 caruncle presents a crescentic shape, but the moment it is applied 

 to the glass or other smooth surface the caruncles become adapted 

 to it, and assume the form of round flattened disks. All this 

 may be well seen with the half-inch objective, when the Ixodes is 

 walking on the glass object-slide, by an examination of the 

 action on both sides, i. e. either from the ventral or dorsal 

 aspect of the animal. As no mark of viscid matter is then 

 perceptible, it is probable that atmospheric pressure produces the 

 effect. Argas is devoid of such pedal structure. 



Queen-bee Jelly. — The eminent apiarian Major Munn, having 

 sent specimens of queen-bee cells, with their contained larvae and 

 jelly (or "bee bread"), from four to eight days old, ]\Ir. Gulliver 

 undertook to examine it. The colour of the jelly was whitish, its 

 consistence pulpy, its taste somewhat sliarp and sweetish. It 

 reddened litmus ; was miscible with water, and assumed an opaque 

 white colour with alcohol, sublimate, nitric acid, and heat. Acetic 

 acid produced no effect, but caustic potass very quickly and com- 

 pletely dissolved it, and the solution was instautly precipitated on 

 the addition of acetic acid. There was no trace of gelatine in tlie 

 jelly ; it soon dried into an amber-like solid, but became white and 

 pulpy, as it was originally, when soaked in water. Morpholo- 

 gically, the jelly was partly composed of a very fine molecular base, 

 like that of mammalian chyle, the molecules much alike in size and 

 form, and measuring each about l-30,000th of an inch in diameter ; 

 but the molecules, being completely insoluble in alcohol or ether, 

 differ from those of chyle. 



It is not a little remarkable that this queen-bee jelly, though 

 undoubtedly of very high importance in the economy of this most 

 useful insect, is not even mentioned, much less described, in the 



