70 
New Species of Ixodidae, etc. 
December, 1906, one containing ticks collected in the Bangalore and 
Mysore districts, and the other ticks from the Secunderabad and 
Hydei’abad districts (hosts not mentioned) contained numerous females 
identical with the Matara specimen. Careful examination of these 
various ticks has convinced us that it is necessary to establish a new 
variety of H. bispinosa, especially as, in identifying that species, attention 
is naturally first directed to the dorsal spine on the third palpal article, 
which, in the variety, is almost obsolete. 
H. bispinosa var. intermedia differs from the type as follows:— 
Male unknown. 
Female : scutum rather smaller (1 x - 7 mm.) and with sides some¬ 
what straighten Gapitulum, : base smaller, but in other respects similar. 
Hypostome 4|4, the toothed portion very short. Palps recalling those 
of H. campanulata, article 2 being abruptly salient, and the lateral con¬ 
tour of articles 2 and 3 being sinuous and unbroken. The dorsal spine 
on article 3 is nearly obsolete. Its situation is more internal, and it lies 
flush with the surface of the palp. The peculiarities of the capitulum 
give this variety a different facies from the type, in which article 3 of 
the palp is laterally salient, and the dorsal spine is raised conspicuously 
above the surface of the palp. It forms a link between the bispinosa 
group and the group of which campanulata is the type (hence inter¬ 
media). 
Abnormalities observed in Ticks. 
In the literature on ticks the occm'rence of slight abnormalities has 
been occasionally noted. These abnormalities may affect a variety of 
chitinous structures. In Avgas persicus slight asymmetry is not at all 
infrequent, as has been noted elsewhere 1 . In Amblyomma hebraeum 
var. splendidum (J) we have observed the absence of the median festoon, 
and Oudemans’ A. scaevola is abnormal in having the legs of one side 
underdeveloped. In A. longirostrum ($ ), Cooper and Robinson (1908) 2 
have noted that the spiracles may show asymmetry and in other Ixodidae 
the files of teeth on each half of the hypostome have been occasionally 
observed to be unequal in number. In a specimen of Haemapkysalis 
bispinosa received by us from India, the palps show a considerable 
1 Nuttall, Warburton, Cooper and Robinson (X. 1908), Ticks, A Monograph of the 
Ixodoidea, Part I, Argasidae, p. 13. 
2 Cooper and Robinson (15. II. 1908), On six new species of Ixodidae including a second 
species of the new genus Rhipicentor N. and W. Proc. Cambr. Philos. Soc., xiv. pp. 457— 
470. 
