1 86 Correspondence. lAm-i 



LApril 



Random Notes on some of the Parasites of Birds. 



To the Editors of 'The Auk' : — 



Dear Sirs: — Five or six years ago when collecting in New Mexico, 

 I shot one afternoon some eighteen or twenty White-throated Swifts 

 (Aeronantes melanoleucns), which I carried home as usual in newspaper 

 cones in my pockets. On my way back I discovered an enormous para- 

 site crawling along the edge of the collar of my shooting-jacket. At 

 first it struck me that it must be some large 'pine-louse' which had fallen 

 on me while passing through the timber earlier in the day. But as I 

 walked along the idea came into my mind that perhaps the Swifts had 

 something to do with it, and I at once seated myself on the prairie and 

 took out all my specimens. Some half a dozen of them had been carefully 

 examined before anything turned up to confirm my suspicions, when, sure 

 enough, I came to one which had crawling among its feathers an insect 

 apparently the very counterpart of the one I had captured on my coat. 

 Both of these were consigned to a small bottle in my collecting-case, but 

 a thorough going over of all the rest of my birds did not reward me with 

 another of those interesting parasites. A few days later I sent these speci- 

 mens to the distinguished entomologist Mr. Charles O. Waterhouse, of 

 the British Museum, and he found them worthy of a notice and a figure 

 of the insect in the 'Proceedings' of the Zoological Society of London for 

 18S7 (pp. 163, 164). Mr. Waterhouse found this parasitic dipterous insect 

 to belong to the family Hippoboscidae, and to be new to science. He 

 called it Anapera fimbriata, and remarked : "It is closely allied to Anapera 

 pallida, a European dipterous parasite found on Cypselns apus. It is, 

 however, much larger, and is at once distinguished by the almost total 

 absence of wings — a character which might, by some, be considered of 

 generic importance. Having only two examples, which appear to be 

 females, I prefer for the present to place the species in the genus Ana- 

 pera." 



My attention had never been especially drawn to this interesting subject 

 before, nor have I since had much opportunity to look very closely into it. 

 But it has often occurred to me, that if we were familiar with a great many 

 of the parasites of our birds, they might in some instances prove to be of 

 service in the classification of the birds themselves. Now in the case of 

 those Swifts, — there we find two species, belonging, one each, to widely- 

 separated countries. The extraordinarily large and unusual parasites 

 found on them are also of the same genus, yet of very distinct species. 

 It would be interesting now to know whether this parasite — Anapera 

 fimbriata — is found upon any of our other species of Swifts, or whether 

 they have different kinds infesting them. None of my ornithological 

 friends seem to have given much attention to this subject, and, beyond the 

 writings of Leach, Nitzsch, and Burmeister, I am not especially familiar 

 with the literature of the subject. Sly peeps into Dame Nature's secrets 



