﻿President's Address. 



41 



Stuc-a-Chroin (3189 feet). "Writing in 1817, Leach says of it, 

 "In montibus Caledoni£e vulgatissime."^ 



Chelifer latreillii, Leach — Common on coast of East Lothian 

 and Fife ; was first recorded from our area by H. Crowther.^ 



C hemes dubius, Cambr. — Not uncommon locally ; West and 

 East Lothian, and Fife. 



C. nodosus (Schr.) — Apparently rare ; Edinburgh, twice on 

 legs of flies. 



Chiridium museorum (Leach) — Locally common in buildings, 

 Lothians and Fife. 



AcARiNA — In this, the most neglected and difficult order of 

 the Arachnids, I made a beginning three or four years ago, and 

 have now a list of about 185 species nearly ready for publica- 

 tion. With Michael's British Orihatidm and his treatise in 

 Bas Tierreich as text-books, and the invaluable help of Messrs 

 Warburton and Pearce of Cambridge, the Oribatids, or beetle- 

 like mites, have received most attention. Eighty species, 

 several of them new or only lately discovered,^ have been 

 secured. As this represents 73 per cent, of the British list, 

 I do not expect to obtain many more in this family. Lichen, 

 moss, etc., from the sea-cliffs in the east to the hill-tops in the 

 west, have been examined, and the results seem to show that, 

 given the proper kind of nidus, the majority of these minute 

 animals are little affected by altitude. In September last, 

 a bundle of moss from a wood below Callander yielded 33 

 species, against 24 yielded by a similar quantity from the 

 summits of Ben Ledi and Stuc-a-Chroin. 



Next to the Oribatidse, the beautiful Hydrachnidse or 

 Water-mites, of which a few were known to Johnston and 

 Dalyell,^ have claimed my attention. My list, so far, runs to 

 over 50 species, but the family is a difficult one to work. No 

 English monograph of the group has yet been published, and 

 it is a fact that neither of the two indispensable German works 

 by Piersig is in any of the Edinburgh libraries. The Hydrach- 

 nids of Scotland as a whole, are receiving attention from 

 Mr W. Williamson, who has recently published, in Trans. 

 Edin. Field Nat. Soc, the names of 30 species he has met 

 with, but he does not say which of them were taken in this 



^ Zoological Miscellany, iii. (1817), p. 48. 



^ Science Gossip, xviii. (1882), p. 277 ; and Zoologist, 1882, p. 465. 

 ^ With one exception they are described by Warburton and Pearce in Proc. 

 Zool. Soc, 1905, vol. ii. 



Hist. Berw, N. C, vol. ii., and Potvers of the Creator, vol. i. 



