270 
SarCoptic Scabies 
genera: Sarcoptes, Notoedres, Prosopodectes, Cnemidocoptes, Psoroptes,Psoralges, 
Chorioptes, Caparinia, Otodectes. This view is far from satisfactory as it takes 
no account of the specially close affinity between the four first-named genera, 
which agree in possessing mouth-parts adapted for burrowing, and are, in 
fact, the forms which induce “sarcoptic scabies” in various animals. It is 
much more convenient, and, indeed, is the general practice, to consider the 
nine genera above named as constituting the SARCOPTIDAE, of which a sub¬ 
family Sarcoptinae includes the four genera Sarcoptes, Notoedres, Prosopo- 
decles and Cnemidocoptes, and it is with the Sarcoptinae in this restricted 
sense that we are concerned. Prosopodecf.es is a parasite only found in the 
ears of bats, and it is not proposed to discuss it, so that only three genera 
remain. Indeed since Cnemidocoptes is parasitic only on birds, our chief 
interest is in the genera Sarcoptes and Notoedres. 
Sarcoptes, Notoedres and Cnemidocoptes are precisely the Sarcoptes com¬ 
munes, Sarcoptes notoedres and Sarcoptes anacanthes of Delafond and Bour- 
guignon (1862, p. 13). 
SARCOPTES Latreille, 1806. 
The Tierreich definition is: $ without anal cyhnders (Analnapfe), $ without 
copulation tubes; long unjointed ambulacra on the two anterior legs of the $ 
and the two anterior and the second posterior legs of the Anus terminal. 
Oviparous parasites of mammalia. 
Berlese (Acarotheca italica, Texfcus, 1913) thus defines the genus: 
Maris disculi copulationis foeminaeque tuberculi nulli. Ambulacra longe 
pedunculata, pedunculo haud articulato, in foemina sunt in pedibus primi 
secundique paris, in mari in primo secundo quarfcoque pari. Anus in margine 
postico abdominis apertus. Ovipari, mammalicoli, scabiem sarcopticam indu- 
centes. Species typica Acarus scabiei De Geer. Totus mundus. 
He admits 15 species, namely: scabiei De G., canis Gerl., caprae Fiirst., 
dromedarii Gerv., equi Gerl., ovis Megn., parvulus Can., cuniculi Neum., 
scabiei-crustosae Fiirst., suis Gerl., vulpis Fiirst., aucheniae Raill., hydrochaeri 
Megn., rupicaprae Hering, wombati Raill. 
Canestrini and Kramer (in Schultze’s Tierreich, 1899) include all these 
together with three others, leonis Can., lupi Megn., furonis Raill., in their 
list of species, but they consider aucheniae, hydrochaeri, rupicaprae and 
wombati “doubtful.” 
And now it will be as well to interpose at the outset the gist of a passage 
from Megnin (1875, pp. 1058-1060) so significant that it is bound to affect 
profoundly the views of anyone engaged on a revision of the matter. He had 
been studying the Sarcoptes of the horse during and after the Franco-Prussian 
War (1871 and 1872), and had created a new species, S. uncinatus, based on: 
(1) the presence of a strong claw on the inferior face of the second article 
of each anterior leg; 
(2) the presence in the middle of the notothorax in both sexes, but 
