EATZEBUEG. 
61 
sometimes infests the spruce-fir {Finns abies)^ and 
constructSj or rather causes, an abnormal growth of 
very curious pineapple-like excrescences near the axils 
of the young shoots. However, my belief is, after 
careful observation, that he unnecessarily splits this 
species into two. The reasons he gives for so doing, 
viz. a certain difference in colour, and a slight depar- 
ture from the usual furcation of the veins on the upper 
wings, are not to my mind characters of sufficient 
importance to lead us to suppose otherwise than that 
these are mere varieties of the same insect. Again, I 
must express grave doubts as to his discovery of the 
male of Ghermes ahietis {G. viridis, Hatz.). My own 
observations lead me to the conclusion that this insect 
is precisely one of those interesting forms in which we 
might almost believe, though the evidence be but 
negative, that no male occurs. That such anomalies 
occur in nature has been distinctly asserted by 
Leuckart and Von Siebold. Hatzeburg’s figure of the 
presumed male but little differs from the form of the 
ordinary winged^ female ; and if we may reason from 
analogy, the bodily proportions given are not those we 
^ight be led to expect in the male. Ratzeburg failed 
‘to discover any signs of testes or their adjuncts in the 
specimens he examined. There is some significance 
in the small spinous processes he draws near the anal 
region, inasmuch as they closely resemble the double 
booklets attached to the very short ovipositor of the 
allied species, Ghermes laricis. 
In confinement I have bred, during two seasons, 
many thousand specimens of Ghermes ahietis^ but I 
have uniformly failed to detect, by the microscope or 
otherwise, a single male amongst the mass. Still, 
caution should be a text of philosophy. Von Siebold 
examined microscopically 5796 individuals of the little 
Entomostracan Apus, and failed to discover the male ; 
yet in 1868 the male was proved to exist by Kozu- 
bowski. Sir J. Lubbock also examined 193 individuals 
of Apus cancriformis with a similar result ; yet, singu- 
