Note on Mallophaga from the Little Auk ; &c. 267 



was much the rarest, being detected on one or two of the birds only, and 

 then in very small numbers. Menopon is a difficult genns, many very 

 closely allied forms having been described, but only one of them — M 

 lutescens, Nitzsch — being recorded from a member of the Alcidse, namely 

 from the Eazorbill. Though not agreeing exactly with some from a 

 Razorbill — they are rather smaller and paler— I am disposed to refer my 

 specimens to M. lutescens, N., of which they can, I think, be at most 

 nothing more than a variety. 



T now come to the second part of my paper, namely, the list of 

 species obtained in the Forth Area. As in the case of a number of 

 other groups, though not specially investigating them, I have collected 

 Mallophaga for a good many years past as opportunities occurred ; 

 but T have never shot birds for the express purpose of obtaining their 

 parasites, otherwise a much longer list than that given below wovdd no 

 doubt have resulted. Further, when birds of different sorts have been 

 in contact, as by having been put in the same bag or parcel, specimens 

 from them are unsatisfactory, and it has generally been my practice to 

 reject them. Besides the "hosts" (124) named in the list, a number of 

 other birds have been examined without any of these ectoparasites being 

 found upon them. 



As matters at present stand, the difficulties that attend the identification 

 of one's specimens in this group are formidable. A thorough revision of 

 the Mallophaga on the basis of a large series of examples from a wide 

 range of hosts and localities would, one may predict, result in a considerable 

 weeding out of supposed species ; while advocates of up-to-date rules of 

 nomenclature have here a fruitful field for change before them. 1 Many 

 of Nitzsch's names being apparently " nomina nuda" till the publication 

 of Giebel's " Insecta Epizoa" in 1874, some of them will, it would seem, 

 have to give place to those proposed by Denny in his 1842 "Monograph." 

 It is not my intention, however, to discuss this question here, even if I 

 were competent to do so, and for the present I am content to follow the 

 arrangement, and, with some few exceptions, the nomenclature of Piaget's 

 " Les Pediculines," 1880. In his comprehensive list of Mallophaga 

 published in 1908 in Wytsman's "Genera Insectorum," Prof. Y. L. 

 Kellogg places the species in each genus alphabetically, bat his 

 arrangement of the genera themselves does not differ materially from 



1 In his "Notes" above referred to, Prof. Neumann has proposed some changes in' the 

 generic names. 



