5084 Entomological Society. 



may speculate ad infinitum on causes, — I have only to deal with results. Certain it 

 is that parturition took place through the aperture in the middle of the back : out of 

 this the young ones sallied one after another, and ran about over their mother's body, 

 just as I have seen rabbits issue from their burrow and course one another over the 

 frost-hardened surface of the snow: they looked exactly like little Acari, and, con- 

 trasted with their very quiet, sedate, and almost lethargic mother, were eminently 

 ' fast young men ' scampering over the body of their parent, clustering about her head 

 and performing all manner of gymnastic exercises on her antennae: indeed, greatly 

 to the credit of such restless beings, it must be allowed that, by all kinds of fondling, 

 they seemed determined to exhibit the most ardent filial affection ; but this highly 

 demonstrative exhibition was not apparently returned by any maternal storge, for 

 nothing could have been more stolid or apathetic than the demeanour of the mother 

 under all this fondling. However, the scene lasted but a short time: mother and 

 children were starved to death, and the latter were placed under the microscope. It 

 only remains to say a few words descriptive of the young, and first as to size and pro- 

 portions. Measured longitudinally and transversely I found the body was *024 inch, 

 so that it was nearly a circular disk, presenting, however, a number of elevations, de- 

 pressions and irregularities, which possibly resulted from drying : the colour was 

 pitchy red, but attached to the dermal envelope, in various places, and without any 

 semblance of regularity, were a number of minute flattened bodies, perfectly white, 

 and having the appearance of little flakes of snow : these are so numerous as to give 

 the little creatures quite a dusty appearance: the legs are six ; their attachment ap- 

 proximate; their length -035 of an inch, or equal to a diameter and a half of the 

 body: they consist of the four ordinary parts ; a well-developed coxa, a femur, tibia 

 and tarsus, so equal in length that there was no discrepancy measurable by the mi- 

 crometer; the tarsus is exarticulate or composed of a single piece, and armed with a 

 single, terminal, slightly curved, and apparently immovable claw. This mononycous 

 character of the foot does not appear the very best for prehension, yet the prehensile 

 power of the legs is beyond all question, for the little ones crawled about their mother's 

 body with the most perfect nonchalance, never tumbling, even by chance, from the 

 dizzy elevation of her antenna). Each of them had a head, which, however, was a 

 fixture, having no power of motion, but being closely anchylosed to the trunk, and its 

 presence only to be detected when viewed from above, by a line of demarcation ; below, 

 on the contrary, it bore a large, straight, and really formidable beak, which Savigny 

 would doubtless have resolved into the constituent parts of an ordinary insect-mouth, 

 but which I could make nothing more of than a beak: its very connexion with the 

 head seemed problematical, and yet I take that for granted ; but as a matter of 

 appearance, mind I am very particular not to say a matter of fact, this suctorial in- 

 strument seemed to come out of the stomach ; indeed, supposing its office that of a 

 pump, for pumping out the sap, one might aptly call it a 'stomach-pump.' The head, 

 moreover, bore — and these were very evident personal property, whatever the pump 

 might be — two very conspicuous seven-jointed antennas, which gradually, almost im- 

 perceptibly, decreased in size from the base to the apex: the fourth, fifth and sixth 

 joints were each marked by a scarcely perceptible ring or indentation at half their 

 length, thus indicating the subcutical existence of three more joints, making ten in 

 all, the number which the mother actually possessed." 



M r. Westwoud remarked that the female of the Dorthcsia, so accurately described 



