CASE 

 XIII. 



MARINE MITES. 205 



Family HALACARID.E (Marine Mites). 



We have already spoken of the interest attaching to the 

 occurrence of mites in the sea, and we have seen that one or two 

 that have been found there were only terrestrial species, so 

 constituted, as, like various other insects, to bear temporary 

 submersion without inconvenience. We now come, however, to 

 a group which seems rightly entitled to the name of marine 

 mites. But although we bring them in here, it is not as a 

 transition between the Ixodidae and Oribatidas, but rather as a 

 link between the Bdellidse or Trombidiidas and Oribatidae. We 

 can only repeat that there is no linear arrangement in Natural 

 History, and any attempt to make one is constantly interrupted 

 by the necessity of bringing in collateral issues, which the reader 

 must learn to look upon as temporary digressions from the main 

 thread of the story. 



These marine mites were first brought under the notice of the 

 scientific world by M. Dujardin in the Journal de ITnstitut (1842, 

 p. 316), for we pass over the brief notices of Linnaeus and Fabricius, 

 of species living among the sea-weeds on the coasts of Norway, 

 as either not belonging to this group, but more probably to the 

 inter-tidal Gamasidae of which we have already spoken; or if 

 really belonging to this, then not recognisable from the too 

 vague descriptions unaccompanied by figures. But the species 

 indicated by Dujardin seem really to belong to this gi-oup. He 

 speaks first of an Oribates that he found in the sea at L' Orient, 

 and which seems very probably one of those to be presently 

 mentioned, and two other species which he thinks constitute a 

 new genus Molgus near the Bdellidae, coming the one from the 

 coasts of Bretagne, the other from the Mediterranean, which, 

 as already said, are probably the neckless Scirus described by 

 Dr. Johnston as Acarus longicornis or something allied to it ; and 

 lastly, a species that does not swim in the water, and approaches 



