100 Maddox, on Acari in a Nitrate Bath. 
of short rod with a knob at the end. No eye-spots were 
visible. 
Mandibles. 
This description of the insect is very imperfect. I had pur- 
posed to have enclosed a drawing with measurements, &c.^ 
but severe indisposition has disappointed me in the attempt, 
which the accompanying figures, taken from photo-micro- 
graphs, must replace. Of their life-history I know nothing, 
nor do I attempt to advance a theory of how they came into 
the bath. After the strange incidents met with by the late 
Mr. Cross, the celebrated electrician, of the Quantock Hills, 
when forming crystals by the agency of his small but nu- 
merous-celled water battery, we may well pause before the 
portal of creative power, without bringing to our aid equivocal 
or spontaneous generation, as some of the critics of his labours 
ventured unreasonably to apply in his case. No doubt the 
ova were there in the exact conditions to favour their dormant 
energy, though strange to us may seem those conditions — 
The liquid a solution of a caustic salt, capable of seriously in- 
juring animal membranes, at least in ourselves ; the light nil 
or non-actinic ; the creatures themselves highly organised, yet 
not high in the scale — a genus of Arachnida. Few, I think, 
would look for animal life in their nitrate baths ; yet these 
remarks may, if of no further use, now call the attention of 
photographers to the fact of its supporting living organisms, 
even to fatness, and elicit, perhaps, more of their history and 
structure. 
