202 
A New African Louse 
is a single row (6) on the seventh stemite, and two bristles on the eighth; the 
ninth has two moderately long terminal bristles, with two minute between 
and a pair (minute) outside each of the longer bristles. 
In the distribution of the chaetotaxy three regions are recognised. Except 
posteriorly, there is on each segment a distinct gap between the bristles of 
the tergites and those of the pleurae, or between the latter and those of the 
sternites. 
Genitalia. The paramer is a short, rather broad apically rounded lobe which ir 
the exserted state (Fig. 2, E and H) (when the parts fold back over the abdomen) 
is outermost (i.e. posterior or ventral) having thus reversed the position occupied 
at rest (Fig. 2, F). What I believe to be the upper endomers are two narrow 
finely pointed clear chitinised processes which seem straight in the retracted 
condition, viewed from above, but when exserted each is curved and outspread 
so that together they have a lyriform facies. The triangular pseudopennis 
(the lower endomer) appears to emit the sac, which is nowhere distinctly 
chitinised, from its upper surface, near the base. 
I.ength 
Breadth 
Head 
0-34 
017 
Thorax 
0-18 
0-28 
Abdomen 
0-88 
0-64 
Total 
length 
T35 mm. 
Type. S in the collection of the British Museum. 
One of a series (presented by the Imperial Bureau of Entomology), 
2 d <?5 7 $$ and 10 immature, from Cricetomys gambianus, ACCRA: 
6. ii. 1915; No. 519 (Dr J. W. Scott Macfie); and 1 immature with 
same data, 3. xii, 15. 
In the general collection of the British Museum there are also 
2 males (1 damaged) from Cricetomys^ Zanzibar. 
In P. calva some of the generic characters are feebly marked. The 
species, though very distinct, occupies an intermediate position in 
our present classification. The larvae are Linognathus-^e and only 
with the last moult do the characters of Polyplax appear. Superficially, 
at least, its nearest allies are in Linognathoides, Cum min gs (1914), but 
it is possibly best to restrict that name to the squirrel-infesting lice. 
