544 The American Naturalist. [June, 
struggles considerably or is likely to eseape, the slime is ejected upon 
it for the purpose of quieting its struggles. In doing this the animal 
raises its head and the anterior portion of its body from the ground 
and ejects the slime strongly in two small streams for some distance. 
The slime is not acrid, is tasteless, and in is no way irritating to human 
mucous membranes; but it is very viscid. 
The animals cast their skins at regular intervals, very much as do 
insect larvee, and the cast skins are usually worked over with the jaws 
of the animal and swallowed. 
__The young are born at all times from the middle of November to 
the middle of March, and are about five millimeters long at birth. 
Growth takes place at the rate of about one millimeter per month, and 
from the latter fact the author concludes that the animals must be 
about two years old when full grown, and from other observations he 
thinks they must be three years old when they first give birth to young. 
External parasites have not been found. 
A Myrmecophlous Mite.—The brief note by ©. Janet‘ on the 
Mite Antennophorus uhlmanni, recalls, one noted some time ago on the 
relations of Lepismina polypoda to ants. This mite is found living as 
an epizootic parasite on Lasius mixtus. Often there is but one parasite 
to a worker ant, but sometimes there are more, as shown in the figure. 
\-27t © 
TET POPPE 
In any case the mites arrange themselves on the host with reference to 
the median plane of the latter so as not to disturb its equilibrium. 
there are two parasites, they occupy opposite sides. The mite lives en- 
tirely upon the food disgorged by the ant, which, strangely enough, 
seems to take pleasure in feeding its parasitic burden whenever called 
upon by the latter to do so. 
The Effect of the Poison of Centipedes.’—From several ex- 
periments performed by Mr. Norman upon mice and snakes, it Appear? 
that the poison of centipedes is so virulent that, if it gets well into the 
*Sur les rapports de P. Antennophorus uhlmanni Halber avec le Lasius mixtus 
‘Nyl. ©. K. Acad. Sc. Paris, CXXIV, 583-5. i i 
5:W..W. Norman, Trans. Texas Acad. Sci., I (1896), 118-119. 
