XXI 



Baron Walckenaer, in his • Histoire Naturelle des Insectes' (Paris, 1844), 

 and Gervais describe the Persian Argas to be truncated. The characteristics 

 assigned to it by Baron Walckenaer are as follows : — ' Maclioires en 

 sucroire, non engainees par les palpes, et cachees ainsi que ceux-ci 

 au-dessous d'une avance de la partie anterieure du corps ; dessous du corps 

 granuleux, non ecailleux, et d'une seule piece; pattes bi-onguicuilees, non 

 vesiculiferes.' 



"My own inquiries in some respects agree with those of M. Savigny, 

 who made a careful study of this insect. He says tliat they are more 

 frequently parasites. A Persian remarked to me that the small species are 

 found on the bodies of fowls and other larger birds, and that afterwards 

 when nearly grown up adhere to walls, from which, during the hot summer 

 nights, they sally forth in quest of food. The theory of the natives is also 

 that during the winter the Argas lives on the fowl, thus accounting for its 

 disappearance; but that during the summer, the air being hot, they live 

 during the day on walls, and come forth at night. But the theory that the 

 Miana bug is a parasite of the fowl can hardly be credited ; else how is it 

 accounted for in such isolated and far-apart places? The fowl is domesticated 

 all over Persia, and not in the few places where the Miana bug is met with, 

 such as at Miana, on the post-road between Teheran and Sabreez, where it is 

 called Melleli, specimens of which I hope shortly to be able lo procure and 

 forward to the Society for examination ; at Mazrah, on the Piesht- Teheran 

 post-road, from whence were procured the five specimens forwarded. 

 Dr. PoUak, recently Professor of Medicine in the Polytechnic at Teheran, 

 describes the Miana bug as the 'Kench'; but this latter corresponds to 

 Ipudes ricinus, the sheep-tick. The Argas is also found at Chesma Ali, 

 near Asterabad, at Shahroud, in Khorassan, and at Kashan, where it is 

 severally known as the ' shebgaz,' or night bug, and ' careebgaz,' or stranger 

 bug, being said not to sting the natives. 



'• Dr. Schlimmer, some time Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the 

 Military College here, in his ' Terminologie Medico-Pharmaceutique et 

 Anthropologique,' has a note on the Argas, in which he says: — 'I think it 

 is a mistaken idea that the natives of Miana are not bitten by this wretched 

 bug. I fancy that once in their lives they were bitten without having 

 noticed it, — for instance, whilst a suckling, or in early youth, or perhaps 

 without remembering it, — and are on this account rendered insusceptible of 

 a second bite. I base,' he continues, 'this theory on ray own experience. 

 At my first visit to Miana, I myself suffered acutely from the bite of this 

 venomous insect; but on a second and third visit I am not aware of having 

 been bitten ; further, in over eight hundred cases of bites from the violent 

 black scorpion of Persia which have come under my notice, I was unable to 

 discover the man who remembered a former bite during his lifetime. It 

 would appear from this that the poison once inoculated into the system 



