166 
Haemaphysalis punctata 
It may be said that the body shows no marked trace of segmentation 
in either the nymphal or adult stages, but in the larva at any 
rate, the arrangement of the hairs aud pores indicates a certain 
amount of metamerism; possibly the crowding of these tegumental 
structures in the later stages of the life-history may obscure any such 
appearance. The regular postero-marginal indentations of the body- 
contour in all the stages also seem to point to a feeble persistence of 
segmentation of the abdomen. We have reason to believe, after an 
examination of the embryo of this species, that at an early period of 
the development, some five or six segments appear in the body, posterior 
to the last pair of limb-buds. The exact significance of these phenomena 
we hope to determine later, when we have an opportunity of devoting 
more time to the embryology of the Ixodoidea 1 . 
The dorsal surface of the body is covered almost entirely in the 
male and the anterior half only in the female, nymph and larva, with 
a plate of chitin which is denser, harder and more deeply pigmented 
than the general body chitin; this structure which is present in all 
ticks with the exception of the Argasidae is termed the scutum. 
In many genera of ticks, the scutum bears the single pair of eyes, 
one on either lateral margin ; in Haemaphysalis, however, as in the 
genera Ixodes and Aponomma, no trace of these organs exists. 
On the ventral surface of the body in its anterior half are borne the 
legs, four pairs in the adult and nymph, and three pairs in the larva. 
Each leg is comprised of about six articles, all of which are freely 
movable with the exception of the most proximal article or coxa. 
Each of the legs carries at its extremity a foot provided with two long 
curved claws ( ungues ) and a pad ( pulvillus). 
On the ventral surface of the body in the adult, two large openings 
are seen in the middle line. The first lies midway between the coxae 
of the first and second pairs of legs and has the appearance of a 
transverse slit: this is the genital orifice. In the nymph, a minute pit 
is visible in a corresponding situation which may be considered as an 
Anlage of the genital orifice of the adult. The larva exhibits no trace 
of such a structure. Some distance posterior to the genital opening, at 
about the commencement of the posterior third of the body, is the anus, 
a longitudinal slit bounded laterally by a pair of crescentic plates, the 
anal valves, the whole being surrounded by a ring or annulus of 
thickened chitin. 
1 Wagner J. 1892, p. 319 “ Hinter den Beinen licgen o —6 Mesodermgruppen." 
