1918.] 19 



my paddock here, on April 20tli, 1917, tliat I placed it in a tube. On looking- 

 at it indoors, I found that two of the mites were now detached from the 

 beetle and walking about, though in some way connected with each other; 

 these took no further notice of the beetle. To the latter were still attached 

 six mites — their position was most remarkable, being- high in air, at the top of 

 an elongate filament thrice the length of the body (reminding one of pictures 

 of '"The Martians " in Mr. Wells's story), which in each case was fixed to the 

 hardest part of the insect's chitin--one to the centre of the frons, three to 

 the disc of the thorax, one to the disc of the right elytron, and one to the disc 

 of the penultimate segment. The mites are castaneous with fiavescent legs and 

 nearly circular body, but a lens shows neither sculpture nor antennae. The 

 eight legs are usually held still, curled beneath the body, though occasionally 

 seen groping for a fulcrum they never attained. The filament proceeds from 

 the anal extremity, though whether connected with oviposition or not I cannot 

 tell ; it varies somewhat in length in the different specimens, though this does 

 not appear to be owing to its corresponding depth in the insect's body, for I 

 cannot see that it pierces the chitin. Two of the mites were leaning against 

 eacli other, in this elevated position, though all the filaments seemed perfectly 

 capable of bearing their weight for the first two or three days. No cliange was 

 observable till the morning of the 23rd, when the filaments seemed a little 

 slack, so that the mites ciu'ved over and now nearly touched the surface of the 

 beetle, though their legs, etc., were still retracted. At noon the same day 

 the beetle was moribund, with its abdomen much shrunken ; but the mites 

 showed no signs of inflation, on the contrary, their ventral surface was 

 decidedly less convex than at first. The beetle was dead at 8 p.m. The 

 24th showed the mites flatter yet ; on the 26th they were still more deplanate 

 and were all lying over as though their filaments had lost rigidity ; and so they 

 remained till the 28th, when I put them by, on the chance of further deveh)p- 

 ments taking place later on ; but none are apparent to the present date. The 

 only other instance I can cite of this kind is the presence of a crowd of fully a 

 dozen similar, though certainly slightly larger, Oribatids attached in like 

 manner to the disc only of the abdomen of a specimen of the Ortalid Dipteron, 

 Seuptera vihrans Linn., which was kindly sent to me on July 20th, 1900, from 

 Tostock, in Suffolk, by Mr. W. H. Tuck, now of Bury St. Edmunds. — Claude 

 3foiiL?:-i, Monks Soham House, Suffolk; Oct. 20th, 1917. 



The South London Entomological and Natural History Society : 

 September IWi, 1917. — Mr. IIy. J. Turner, F.E.S., President, in the Chair. 



Mr. Hugh Main exhibited an observation-cage with the burrow of Cicindehi 

 campestris containing the already perfected imago, which would, however, not 

 emerge from the '' dug-out '' till the spring. He also showed a Mautid from 

 Sicily which readily took larvae and flies when oft'ered to it ; and he reported 

 the large green grasshopper, Locusta viridissima, as feeding readily on larvae 

 of Pieris brassicae when offered to it. Mr. Leeds, a number of aberrations of 

 Coenotiijmpha pamphilus from Herts, including upperside specimens with absence 

 and variations in size of the apical spot of fore wing, variations in amount and 



