ACTING STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
45 
sound, tlic young Mites being stationed in the middle, as fi mow ei stations himself 
between the standing grass and the swath that he has already cut, finall}, in still 
other cases, nothing but the empty shells of the eggs remained, and occasionally the 
hungry young Mites might still be discovered among those empty shells, kicking and 
struggling in the snug retreat that they had so ruthlessly desolated, as dogs sometimes 
fight over a bone that has been already picked clean. 
Towards the spring, or late in the autumn, many of the scales, some of them still 
containing a few eggs, may be observed to have rather large, iiiegulai, ragged holes in 
their external surface, quite unlike the smaller, regularly-rounded holes, bored by 
Parasitic insects when they make their escape from the shell of an insect of this size 
that they have preyed on. Early in the autumn scarcely any such holes are to be met 
with in the recently-formed scales. I suspect that these ragged holes are the work of 
the Mites, and that, after having sucked all the eggs dry, they feed upon the dry scale, 
until hunger compels them to vacate the tenement and search out a scale that has not 
as yet been preyed upon by their brethren. Dr. Pitch mentions that he found a small 
Parasitic larva — which as usual bored a small round hole to escape by — to be very 
common under these scales. I have never met with any such larva ; but I have occa¬ 
sionally seen scales, both of the Oyster-sliell Bark-louse and of Harris’s Bark-louse, 
perforated by just such a small round hole as Dr. Fitch describes ■, and I should judge 
them to have been made by a parasitic four-winged Fly (Chalcis family or Proctotrupes 
family.) 
Some of these Mite-lame that were discovered in May, are described in my Journal 
as being of a glassy-white color, six-legged, and with the hind pair of legs placed as 
usual far backwards ; their bodies oval, 2X times as long as wide, not at all hairy, and 
of about the same length as the egg of the Bark-louse. Others, noticed about the last 
of October, agreed pretty accurately with the above description. Others, again, found 
about the same time, differed in being rather larger and more elongate — thrice, instead 
of 234 times as long as wide —and in having 8 distinct legs, the two hindmost pairs 
separated by a very wide interval from the two foremost pairs. These were probably 
the pupa form of the others. All of them had the thorax separated from the abdomen 
by a transverse suture ; and, as is universally the case, so fai as I have obseived, with 
immature Mites, were sluggish in their movements. On the other hand, all Cannibal 
Mites that I am acquainted with, are, in the adult state, exceedingly active, and run 
with astonishing rapidity for creatures of their minute size. 
I think it not improbable that there are several distinct species of Mites that prey 
upon these Bark-louse eggs. I have descriptions in my journal of adult Mites, belong¬ 
ing to what seem to be four distinct species, two of which were merely found limning 
about among the scales, one was found under a scale where one-thiid of the eggs v eie 
white and plump aud the rest yellowish and shrunken, and the other one under a scale 
in company with two Mite-larva?, that were undoubtedly preying upon the eggs of the 
Bark-louse. As is usual with Mites arrived at maturity, there was no distinct transverse 
suture, dividing the head-thorax from the abdomen, in any of these foui. I ha\e not 
been able to succeed in rearing any of the Mite-larvae found under the scales to the adult 
state ; so that 1 will mercifully forbear for the present inflicting upon the general leadei 
long descriptions of adult Mites, which, although they were certainly some of them 
found under very suspicious circumstances, yet cannot be positively proved to piey 
upon Bark-louse eggs, and in any case cannot be identified with the larvae that I know 
to prey upon these eggs. Not improbably, some of what I have supposed to be distinct 
