1 62 ox NEW AXD RARE BRITISH ARACHNIDA. 



tentatively determined in time past. One subject of great 

 interest contained in the present commmiication is afforded by 

 the Kst subjoined of a number of species of the Order Acaridea 

 (or, as popularly known, INIites). The species alluded to are all 

 of one famil)- — Oribalidce, or Beetle-mites. They are very small, 

 many of them quite microscopic, living among moss, dead leaves, 

 decayed and decaying rubbish, and under dead bark of trees, 

 decaying wood and boards, stones, &c., and often looking like 

 minute globular shining black or brown morsels. They are 

 for the most part dull and sluggish in their movements, and are 

 easily collected, having a more or less hardened coriaceous 

 epidermis, and can be preser\-ed well in diluted methylated 

 spirit like spiders, though for a completely satisfactory' working 

 out of their structure, which is often ver}' curious, Some further 

 manipulation is necessary ; and the objects also require prepara- 

 tion in some other fluid besides, or in lieu of, spirit. I have 

 myself never been able to find time for specially working (along 

 with others of the Arachnida) at this group (nor indeed at any 

 other group of the Acaridea), though I have at times collected 

 many species. It requires someone who could give up the whole 

 of much spare time to it, and it is a work greatly needed to be 

 done, as, excepting two or three of its isolated groups, there is 

 no British naturalist, so far as I know, who has attacked or who 

 is working at the whole Order of Acarids. To recur, however, 

 for a moment to the subjoined List of Oribaiida:, this consists of 

 fifty-two species, forty-nine of which were found in September 

 last by my old friend, ]\Ir. Cecil Warburton (]M.A. Christ's 

 College, Cambridge, and " Zoologist to the Royal Agricultural 

 Society of England "), in the course of a few minutes gathering 

 of moss in an old fir plantation (^Nlorden Park, near Bloxworth). 

 No attempt at separating and collecting these little mites 

 individually on the spot is necessar}-. The moss is placed in a 

 tin box, and the contents can be shaken out and examined 

 indoors at leisure. Mr. Warburton has a mechanical method of 

 sifting out these little creatures from the moss, by which the 

 whole contents arc revealed almost at once, thus sa\-ing a long 



