APHANIPTERA. — PULICID&. 489 
Fig. 123. 

ditto, natural size); insects of minute size, which, in regard to their 
structural details and natural relations, have greatly perplexed natu- 
ralists, who, founding their arrangements in ignorance of their real 
peculiarities, have placed these insects in situations which a more 
precise acquaintance with them has proved untenable. The body of 
these insects is compressed and covered with a hard shining inte- 
gument clothed with sharp bristles arranged in transverse series 
upon the back and legs; the segments of the body are continuous, 
without any marked separation between the three principal parts; the 
head is small; the mouth is called a rostrulum by Kirby and Spence 
(Introd. vol. iii. p. 471.*), and is employed in suction. It is to Sa- 
vigny and Curtis+ that we are indebted for an acquaintance with the 
real structure of the parts of the mouth, which has been confirmed by 
my own dissections, and by the researches of M. Duges; a highly 
magnified view of the parts of the mouth has been published by Mr. 
Aldous, of which jig. 123. 3. is a very reduced partial copy, and 
Jig. 123. 4. represents the parts of the mouth opened in front. The 
upper lip is entirely obsolete (if the part described as the lingua be 
not its real representative); the mandibles (scalpella K. & S., tube 
Hook) are two elongated flattened setae, with a central rib, and with 
the edges finely serrulated (jig. 123. 3, 4. md., and 5.); these, with the 
lingua (ligula A. & S., sucker Hook), which is of equal length, but 
more slender (fig. 123. 3, 4. 73. and 7.), are united in the middle 
of the mouth to form an instrument which, from analogy with the 
* These authors figure all the parts of the mouth (Jnér. vol. iii. pl. 7. £8.) 
they, however, like many previous writers, accounted tHe maxillary palpi as an- 
tenn, and hence their nomenclature of the other parts is inaccurate. 
+ Savigny (Mém. sur 1. An. sans Vertébr. pt. 1. p. 27. 1816) first published a 
description of the real structure of the mouth. 
