300 



President to report upon Group VIII, whicli in the main represents 

 agricultural products. Since last autumn much of his time, as the rep- 

 resentative of the Secretary of Agriculture, has been devoted to the 

 preparation of an exhibit of the agricultural products of the United 

 States for that Exposition. While his duties in Europe will necessarily 

 prevent active direction of Divisional matters, he hopes by constant 

 correspondence with the office to still keep in communication with the 

 readers of Insect Life. 



During his absence Mr. Howard will be Assistant in Charge, and will 

 also act as Curator of Insects for the National Museum. 



SYSTEMATIC RELATIONS OF PLATYPSYLLUS, AS DETERMINED BY 



THE LARVA.* 



By C. V. Riley. 



There is always a great deal of interest attaching to oiganisms which 

 are unique in character and which systematists find difficulty in placing 

 in any of their schemes of classification. A number of instances will 

 occur to every working naturalist, and I need only refer to Limulus, 

 and the extensive literature devoted during the past decade to the 

 discussion of its true position, as a marked and well-known illustration. 

 In Hexapods the common earwig and flea are familiar illustrations. 

 These osculant or aberrant forms occur most among parasitic groups, 

 as the Stylopidse, Hippoboscidse, Pulicidse, Mallophaga, etc. Probably 

 no Hexapody however, has more interested entomologists than Platyp- 

 syllus castoris Kitsema, a parasite of the beaver. I can not better illus- 

 trate the diversity of opinion respecting its true position in zoology than 

 by giving an epitome of the more important literature upon it. 



J. Ritsema, in Petites Nouvelles Entomologiques for September 15, 1869, 

 described the species as PlatypsyUus castoris. He found it on some 

 American beavers {Castor canadensis) in the zoological garden of Rot- 

 terdam. He considered it to *^ undoubtedly" belong to the Suctoria of 

 De Geer, and to form a new genus of Pulicidse. 



In the same year, in the Tijdschrift voor PJntomologie, second series, 

 Vol. y, p. 185 (which I have not seen), the same author publishes what 

 is apparently a re-description of the insect. He gives his views more 

 fully as to its systematic position, considering that it belongs to the 

 Aphaniptera, and is equivalent to the Pulicidiie. 



In the same year, Prof. J. O. Westwood (having previously read a 

 description of the species, IN'ovember 9, 1868, before the Ashmolean 

 Society of Oxford) published in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine^ 

 Vol. VI, October, 1869, pp. 118-1 19, a full characterization of the in- 



* Read at the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, April 20, 1888, and 

 here reprinted from Scientific American Supplement, June 2, 1883, vol. 25, p. 10356. 



