Furniture Pests. 
I 2 I 
Glyciphagus spinipes of Kocli, and G. domesticus, De Geer. G. spinipes 
is an abundant and widely distributed mite, and feeds chiefly on 
dried animal and vegetable matter. It is found abundantly in straw 
and hay, also in flour, meal, cantharides, horsehair, etc. G. domesticus 
is also an abundant acarus in houses, sheds, stables, etc., and feeds 
on hay, straw, bran, on dried fruits, dead insects, cork, tobacco, and 
unclean horsehair. It is frequently found in furniture. Oudemans 
found it “ literally covering the furniture of the whole house, and 
states that they fed on the animal fat which adhered to the not 
thoroughly cleaned horsehair with which the furniture was stuffed. 
Fig. 15. — household mites. 
A. Glyciphagus domesticus (De Geer). B. G. spinipes (Koch). 
(After Albert Michael.) 
It is thus likely they often originate from the stuffing used, but it 
is not possible to say. 
Nine species of this genus of mites occcur in Great Britain. 
Three species ( G . dispar , Michael ; G. crameri, Michael ; and G. pla- 
tygaster , Michael) live in moles’ nests ; one ( G . sciurus, Haller), in 
squirrel nests; the others ( G . palmifer, Bobt. Finn.; G. canestrini, 
Armanelli ; and G. plumiger , Koch), commonly in stable fodder and 
in dust and sawdust. 
Life-history. 
These minute acari deposit their eggs amongst the substances 
upon which they feed. The eggs are comparatively large, oval and 
smooth-shelled, of a dull grey or white, the outer covering being 
