38 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



is in the wrong when he says that it never makes itself a gallery. 

 According to Bourguignon, the greater activity of the male is 

 effected by the suckers upon the fourth pair of feet, which I 

 cannot agree to, any more than the statement that the male quits 

 his dwelling every twenty-four hpurs, and goes upon the quest at 

 night like all wandering mites. This takes place under the 

 influence of warmth (vide infra) whether by day or night, as is 

 also confirmed by Hebra. 



Before becoming mature males and females, the young mites, 

 like all Arachnida, pass through a sort of moulting. Previous to 

 this change of skin, they always contract all the moveable parts 

 of the body, resign themselves to repose, and remain benumbed 

 and stiff in the hindermost blind extremity of the gallery. The 

 contents of their body form an amorphous mass, as in the egg, 

 during its segmentation. We usually count three such changes of 

 skin. From the first moult the hexapod mite comes forth with 

 eight legs ; everything else, even the processes, remains the same 

 in all stages. Before each change of skin the skeleton of the 

 mite is darker and harder, the head and extremities are smaller 

 in proportion to the body, and the whole animal in better con- 

 dition and fatter. After this change the skeleton is softer and 

 paler, the head and extremities larger in proportion to the body, 

 and the animal is not so fat. 



Besides this change of skin, the octopod mite undergoes a 

 further moulting, from which it issues again without sexual 

 organs, which it only obtains after the third change of skin. 

 Older females, which have remained unimpregnated, wander out 

 of their passages, shrivel up, and take up a position as before 

 moulting. Whether these pass through another change of skin 

 is unknown. 



The cast skins remain lying rolled up together in the passages. 

 After the first and second changes the female mites wander out 

 and bore themselves new galleries, but after the third, they mine 

 further on in the gallery in which they have changed their skin, 

 until they are sought out by the male. The size of a female 

 mite in its first change of skin is y 1 /", in the second I"' ' } and in 

 the third '" ; the males are proportionately smaller. 



The act of copulation was seen by Worms, who states with 

 regard to the males in general, that they like to be in the vicinity 

 of the galleries of mature females. The male creeps, as in the 

 lice, under the belly of the female in such a manner that the 



