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DORIS L. MACKINNON. 
elaborate forms, and strengthened tlie view that the tricho- 
nymphids had sprung from a flagellate stock, a view that the 
recent work of Janicki (1910) and others has still further 
confirmed. 
The object of the present paper is to point out that, while 
the affinities of Lophomonas are with the Polymastigina, of 
Doflein, as Kent long ago suggested, yet, within that order, 
it is to the hitherto little-known genus Polymastix that we 
must look for further data of phylogenetic interest. (See 
Mackinnon, 1912). 
Polymastix, Butschli. 
Habitat and Previous Pecords. 
Polymastix is a small flagellate which has been found 
parasitic in the alimentary canal of certain larval insects, such 
as Melolontha, Cetonia, Orycytes,^ and Tipula. 
It was first described by Grassi (1882), as Trichomonas 
melolonthm. Butschli (1884) removed it from the genus 
Trichomonas, and formed for it a new genus Polymastix, 
characterised by four equal, forwardly directed flagella, and 
a firm striated periplast. KunstlePs account (1882) brought 
in some confusion by his stating that there might be as 
many as six flagella.^ This author also suggested that the 
striations on the periplast might be adherent bacteria. 
Polymastix was not further investigated until 1911, 
when Hamburger briefly described the flagellate as it is 
found in Melolontha and Cetonia. Contemporaneously 
with Fraulein Hamburger, I had been working on Poly- 
mastix from the hind-gut of the larva of Tipula, sp. I 
published a short account in a preliminary note in ^Parasi- 
‘ I am indebted to Dr. Carlos Franca for this record of another 
coleopterous host of Polymastix. 
- This statement led Alexeieff (1911) to place in the genus Poly- 
mastix as P. batrachornm, a flagellate with six flagella from 
Triton tseniatus, for which he has since (1912) been obliged to erect 
a new genus, Hexamastix. 
