278 
BIRD-LICE AS MUTUALISTS. 
Mr. James Weir, jr., in The American Naturalist for August, 1894, 
advances the opinion that the true bird-lice are true mutualists. He 
considers most of them absolutely necessary to the health and well- 
being of their hosts, and their absence to be an indication of disease 
in some form or other in those animals on whose bodies they are not to 
be found. Observation has showed him that the lice immediately 
abandon the bodies of fowls which are the victims of cholera and 
kindred diseases. Their office seems to be to remove the exfoliated 
epithelium and to prey upon all of the waste products of the skin, as 
well as to freshen and beautify the feathers. 
OCCURRENCE OF THE PEAR-LEAF BLISTER-MITE UPON THE PACIFIC 
COAST. 
We learn from the recent California newspapers that the pear-leaf 
blister-mite {Phytoptus pyri) was discovered in California in July by 
Mr. Alexander Craw; that it has recently made its appearance in 
several localities in Oregon, and that it has also been found in Idaho. 
This is one of the injurious, species which is very readily transmitted 
to new localities on nursery stock, since, as has been shown by recent 
investigators, it leaves the leaves and hibernates in the axils of the 
twigs and under the bud scales. The time will come, in our opinion, 
when fruit-growers will buy nursery stock only from those nurserymen 
who make a practice of thoroughly fumigating all stock before ship- 
ment. 
THE OLD GENUS TARANTULA. 
After devious wanderings through the class. Arachnida, Fabricius 1 
genus Tarantula, long familiar to- laymen as applied indiscriminately to 
certain large. ha>iry spiders of the family Teraphosidre, has at last been 
saddled by Mr. R. I. Pocock upon certain forms belonging to the Pedi- 
palpi which have generally been referred to the family Phrymdse, a 
tropical group allied to the so-called whip-tailed scorpions. The 
family name Tarantulidae is made by Mr. Pocock coextensive with the 
old family Phrynida?. The type species, Tarantula reniformis (Linn.) 
he considers to be synonymical with Blanchard's Phrynus pallasn. 
Where will these researches based upon the law of priority lead us 
next? 
SYNONYMY CORRECTED. 
On page 372 of the preceding volume of Insect Life, by a clerical or 
typographical error, the anthomyiid described by Dr. Fitch as Hylemyia 
deceptiva is made a synonym of the previously described Phorbia fus- 
cipes Zett. This latter name should have been P. fuscieeps Zett. The 
error is the more unfortunate owing to the fact that Zetterstedt 
described an anthomyiid under the name of Anthomyza fuscipes, but 
this is a very different species from Fitch's. 
