62 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



fusion as to whether it should be called by the specific name first given to the larva when 

 named Atoma gryllaria by Dr. Le Baron in 1372, or by the name of the perfect insect 

 described in lull by Dr. Riley after its true nature had been found out. 



In Murray's Aplera, without date but bound up with Official British Museum Ad- 

 vertisements dated October, 1876, and presumably issued in that year, this mite is tr.-ated 

 of under the heal of Trombidiuin gry/larium ; but, in Mr. Samuel Henshaw's Biblio- 

 graphy of American Economic Entomolog\ , 1890, — a most valuable and carefully prepared 

 work, which will probably be accepted as authoritative by all Economic Entomologists — 

 Astoma gryllarium is made to equal Trombidlum locustarum, and it is, therefore, well fr 

 us to adopt the latter name and to drop altogether the name Atoma or Astoma gryllarium, 

 referring to the stage found attached to locusts merely as the larval stage of TrombHium 

 locustarum, Riley. 



Besides those mentioned there are many other different kinds of parasites which infest 

 locusts, butnone perhaps which excite more surprise when their strange habits are explained 

 than the curious creatures known as "hair snakes" or " hair worms," with their slender hair- 

 like bodies from six to twelve inches in length tapering to each end and only at tuc st one 

 twenty-fifth of an inch through at their greatest diameter. Taese m iy oe sem s> neti ues 

 crawling on or coming; out of the ground in large numbers atter a shower of rain, some- 

 times along the edges of streams, either coiled and knotted up one or many together, or 

 singly swimming close to the surface of the water with an u adulating snake like motion. 

 Dr. Leidy, in his very valuable article on Gordius which appeared in the American En- 

 tomologist for 1870, when referring to the habit of these worms of coiling themselves in 

 intricate masses, suggests that " similar knots no doubt were the source if the scientific 

 name of the worm being applied to it by Linnaeus from the fabled Gordian knot of 

 antiquity. The Gordius, however, not only resembles the latter in the intricate condition- 

 into which it sometimes gets, but its history is yet in part a Gordian knot to be unravelled.' 



These worms are not, by any means, unfamiliar objects in the country, and various mis- 

 conceptions as to their sudden appearance in large numbers and as to their origin are 

 widely prevalent. They are frequently sent for identification with the statement that 

 they had fallen from the clouds in rain. The commonest error, however, is that they are 

 horse hairs which, having fallen into water, have " come to life." It is not necessary here, 

 of course, to paint out the absurdity of this statement. " Such a transformation is an utter 

 impossibility. No dead organic matter can thus be changed into a living creature. It is 

 a law of nature that every animal being, from the lowest to the highest, has its commence 

 ment in an egg." (Lintner). 



Several articles more or less complete have appeared on these worms. By far the 

 fullest is the extended account in the First Report of the United States Entomological 

 Commission, 1878, where probably nearly all that is at present known of their mysterious 

 life history is collected together, and good illustrations are given.' The hair worms, — of 

 which there are several species, found parasitic, in the bodies of insects of nearly all the 

 different orders, such as the Urthoptera, Hvrnenoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and 

 Diptera, — belong to the Entozoa or intestinal worms. They have a very remarkable 

 cycle of development, which may be briefly summed up as follows : The eggs are laid in 

 water, and the exceedingly minute young worms float about in a free state until they find 

 the larvae of some aquatic insects into the bodies of which they effect an entrance, as was ob- 

 served by Dr. Meissner, a German scientist, through the delicate membrane at the joints 

 of the legs. They then work their way gradually among the muscles and other organs 

 throughout the body of their host and after a time become quiescent and encysted so as to 

 resemble their former condition just before leaving the egg, and, as Dr. Meissner says, recall 

 to mind the similarly encysted Trichinae in the muscles of man and the hog. Mr. A. 

 Villot added materially to our knowledge of these curious creatures and found that, when 

 insects infe3ted with these encysted larvae were eaten by fi?h, the bladder-like cysts were 

 dissolved by the process of digestion and the young worms set free in the intestines of 

 their new host, at once bored by means of spines around the head into the mucous layer 

 of the intestines of the fish, where they became again encysted. In the next stage, which 



