NATIONAL WOBK AT BRITISH MUSEUM BATHER. 623 



found there and submitting it to the Natural History Museum for an 

 accurate report. Government departments have also been furnished 

 with reports on the poisonous fishes of the West Indies, on the 

 various kinds of fish preserved as " sardines," and on the lobsters of 

 the cape. Brands of tinned "lobster" have been examined for the 

 London Chamber of Commerce, sometimes with curious results, for 

 one such brand was found to consist of the leg muscles of a large 

 Japanese crab. Crustaceans have also been known to damage tele- 

 graph cables and to transmit disease, while the well-known barnacles 

 are the worst foulers of ship bottoms. In all these cases the informa- 

 tion and advice asked for have been given. 



The presence of our armies in Egypt has caused a large number 

 of enquiries to be sent to the zoological department, and most of 

 these relate to Mollusca. The flat-worm, generally called Bilharzia, 

 which infests the waters of Egypt and produces the irritating dis- 

 ease known as bilharziosis, passes part of its life in the bodies of 

 various fresh-water snails and bivalve shellfish. Several of these 

 have been examined and reported on for the military medical com- 

 mission in Egypt and the Wellcome bureau, Khartoum. The subject 

 is illustrated by a special exhibit in the central hall. In Egypt also 

 a snail has proved an agricultural pest, in Jamaica a slug devastates 

 rubber plantations, in other distant lands molluscs transmit disease 

 or effect material damage. But it is to the Natural History Museum 

 that all the sufferers come for help and advice. 



Mites, ticks, harvesters, and the like are always with us, but their 

 dangerous character has been accentuated by the war. Among those 

 on which advice and information have been given to the military 

 authorities are the Itch mite, mites that damaged stored oats in 

 Flanders and stored corn in Colombia, mites that caused parasitic 

 mange in horses, and one suspected of transmitting anthrax in camels 

 at Aden. Poultry, sheep, ostriches, human beings, vegetation, and 

 furniture are all liable to attacks by mites, and frequent are the 

 appeals to the Natural History Museum from all parts of the world. 

 The same may be said of the various unpleasant animals known as 

 parasitic worms. 



Of all the departments, the entomological is probably of greatest 

 economic importance. Insects are carriers of disease to human beings, 

 animals, and plants ; they destroy our crops, our food stores, and our 

 clothing; even solid structures are stealthily attacked by them and 

 fall without warning into decay. Against this host of enemies the 

 entomologists of the country are mobilized and their headquarters 

 are at the Natural History Museum. Here works the Imperial bureau 

 of entomology, which studies insect pests from all parts of the 

 Empire, and hands over the material received to be preserved in the 



