Through the kindness of my friend Mr Clifford Dobell, F.R.S., I have come into the possession of a quantity of preserved stomach-content from the Mouse Deer of Ceylon (Tragulus meminna Milne-Edwards). As there are no descriptions, so far as I can find, of the Ciliates from Asiatic Ruminants, it seems worth while to publish a brief note on the organisms found in this material.

The genera Citellinema and Warrenius were established by Hall in 1916 with regard to specimens collected from alcoholic host material supplied by Mr E. R. Warren. The genus Citellinema was founded upon a single male specimen from Citellus elegans, named by Hall Citellinema bifurcatum, in reference to the bifurcated spicules. The genus Warrenius was based upon two males, one headless, from Eutamias quadrivittatus, to which Hall gave the name Warrenius quadrivittatus.

En Europe, les cas de myiase cutanée humaine ne semblent pas être d'une grande rareté et la littérature en mentionne un certain nombre, mais les auteurs qui les ont publiés out souvent négligé de donner une description détaillée des larves, de sorte qu'il est parfois difficile d'établir entre elles les comparaisons nécessaires à leur identification. Il est opportun de multiplier les dessins et les descriptions pour arriver, en les collationnant, à dégager les caractères différentiels des larves jeunes de certaines espèces d'Oestrides. C'est pour ces raisons que nous décrirons et figurerons une larve que nous avons eu récemment 1'occasion d'examiner, larve qui s'etait développée sous la peau derrière 1'oreille, chez une jeune fille de la Haute-Savoie (France). Nous la considérons comme une larve au stade B de l'Hypoderma bovis (de Geer), provisoirement peut-être, car elle ne correspond pas exactement aux descriptions qui ont été données pour cette espèce par Brauer, Joly, Topsent et Condorelli. Les indications de ces auteurs diffèrent par plusieurs points, en particulier par la disposition des bandes épineuses. Mais il s'agit là, semble-t-il, d'un caractère éminemment variable, d'autant plus que Phibbs a constaté que, chez les larves au stade C, la répartition des ilots épineux peut varier d'un individu à 1'autre; il est done assez vraisemblable que cette variabilité peut exister déjè au stade B. Admettant que la disposition des bandes et des ilots épineux n'est pas constante, nous avons done considéré la larve qui fait l'objet de ces lignes comme appartenant à l'Hypoderma bovis (de Geer).

Owing to the courtesy of Dr G. M. Vevers I have had the opportunity of examining a marine Ichthyobdellid leech, taken by Dr F. A. Phillipps from the cloaca of a shark, 7 feet long, caught between the islands of Aore and Santu, New Hebrides. The leech resembles Pontobdella superficially in being covered by warty tubercles. It possesses, however, certain peculiarities described below which justify its recognition not only as a new species but also as a representative of a new genus.

A Large part of an account of the Anobiid beetles of the Seychelles Islands by the present writer, recently published (1924), consists of a description of a complex of species of small and obscure insects which it was extremely difficult to unravel. For these beetles, which vary in length between 1·6 and 2·6 mm., a new genus, Nesotheca, was erected. It was found that this genus has representatives in the Oriental Region, though the species of it which occur in the Seychelles are almost certainly endemic to those islands. Owing to the external characters being in many cases very inconstant, it proved impossible to discriminate between the various species at all satisfactorily by these characters alone, and therefore recourse was had to an examination of the genital armature, or aedeagus, of the males. This organ presents in the genus Nesotheca a remarkable series of quite distinct and constant forms, so that specimens which are almost, or entirely, indistinguishable externally, fall into quite clearly demarcated species when the aedeagus is used as a criterion. That the organ exhibits a quite different form in each of the ten species described can be seen by glancing at the figures in the paper to which reference has been made.

Some soldiers and workers of Cornitermes orthocephalus, Silv., were taken at Campos, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July 1923 by Mr F. Balfour Browne, the leader of a party of Cambridge entomologists which visited South America at that time. One of the worker termites was subsequently found to contain a parasitic worm in its abdomen.

Bertiella satyri, normally apparently a parasite of apes, has hitherto been recorded from the orang-utan, Simia satyri, in Borneo, and once from a child in Mauritius.

The parasite herein described was found in the coelomic cavity of Culicoides peregrinus by Mr A. R. O. Smith, of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and was brought to me for identification. It is named after the Teacher of Protozoology, Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine. Numerous specimens with several undergoing ordinary transverse fission were observed.

There has been much difference of opinion as to the specificity of Strongyloides in different hosts, therefore an opportunity has been made use of to compare representatives of this genus, in various stages of their life histories, from monkeys, cats and man, and to compare these with the published characteristics of other forms.

Piroplasma Canisis is known to have a wide distribution in Asia. It has been recorded in India by Dalgetty (1904), Christophers (1907) and others, in French Indo-China, by Mathis (1909), in provinces of China, Shan-tung, by Eggebracht (1908), and Kiang-su by Fischer and Scheidemann (1920). Japanese workers have also found infected dogs in Japan. Recently Witkamp has suggested that P. canis might be the cause of the canine jaundice in the Dutch Indies, which has been described by Van Lier. Endemic centres are thus present in countries to the east and west of Malaya, and the islands to the south are suspect on clinical grounds, but the occurrence of P. canis in this country does not appear to have been hitherto recorded.

B. anthracis, S. faecalis and B. subtilis were found to survive, the first two indefinitely, in the alimentary canal of Argas persicus, and to be passed in its faeces. The stomach contents, in vitro, were bactericidal to B. anthracis, but in some of the tests a few individuals survived, and these may represent more resistant organisms, or spores, to which the infection of the tick by the relatively massive doses used in the feeding experiments was due. In smears of the stomach contents and faeces of the tick, B. anthracis appeared as a short thick bacillus in chains of about three to eight individuals provided with a very well-developed capsule. This capsule, not present in the agar cultures used for the bactericidal tests, may have afforded the bacillus protection within the tick. If this be true, then a very small dose of the capsulated bacilli from the blood of an infected animal might succeed in infecting the tick. A culture of B. anthracis recovered after one hundred days in the tick was found to be fully virulent and pathogenic.

B. subtilis seemed to behave like B. anthracis in the tick, but the investigation of this micro-organism was much less complete than that of B. anthracis. There is an apparent discrepancy between the results of the feeding experiments and the inhibitory tests in vitro. This might be explained by assuming that the two ticks which harboured the bacillus to the end were deficient in the inhibitory principle, which, as shown above, is not equally active in all ticks, or by suggesting, on analogy to the bacteriophage, that the inhibitory element was completely absorbed by the large bacterial dose used in feeding, leaving an excess of bacilli to establish the infection. This might also be put forward as an alternative explanation in the case of B. anthracis.

All the experiments with Streptococcus faecalis were consistent, and showed it to be an organism wholly resistant to the bactericidal and inhibitory elements in the tick's stomach. B. mycoides neither survived long in the tick nor appeared in its faeces. Only four ticks however lived, and of these only two were available for examination; a number perhaps too small to justify any definite conclusion being drawn from purely negative results. Why this bacillus should have behaved differently to the other sporing bacilli, B. anthracis and B. subtilis, is not apparent. It was not more susceptible to the lytic action of stomach contents than was B. anthracis, and, unlike B. subtilis, it was wholly resistant to the inhibitory principle.

Tests with B. pestis and B. melitensis were inconclusive, as both of these micro-organisms died out soon in the inactivated horse serum used in feeding; B. pestis in two weeks and B. melitensis in about three weeks. In the case of B. melitensis the organism apparently survived as long in the tick as it did in the serum control. In order to obtain more conclusive results with these two organisms, it is necessary to find a medium which, while providing a suitable food for the tick, will not prove inimical to the life of the bacillus. It is noteworthy, however, that the growth of these organisms was not inhibited, and B. melitensis was not destroyed, in vitro by ticks' stomach contents.

B. typhosus presented a curious problem in that, while it survived in the stomach for at least twenty-two days, it was never recovered from the faeces; this applies also to the case of B. melitensis. Whether or not this is due to some factor existing in the rectum or malpighian secretion, has not been shown. The cause of the eventual disappearance of B. typhosus from the tick is obscure. It may be that it is killed off by the products of its own life activities in a medium particularly favourable to its growth. No lysin or inhibitory principle affecting B. typhosus was found in the tick.

Staphylococcus aureus furnished very conclusive results. It died out quickly after ingestion by the tick, and the evidence of the feeding experiments was fully supported by the results of the tests in vitro which showed the stomach contents to be powerfully bactericidal and inhibitory to the coccus.

The source and nature of the lytic and inhibitory principles require further investigation which will be made the subject of a later communication by one of us (J.T.D.). For the present, the results of the control cultures on horse serum make it clear that this medium is not the source. Other tests carried out with the inactivated blood of the fowls used for the normal feeding of the ticks gave no appreciable evidence of bactericidal or inhibitory power.Therefore it may reasonably be assumed that the source of these elements is within the tick, but whether they are derived from the salivary glands or the stomach has not been shown. With regard to their nature, their action is not dependent upon the presence of alexin, and the lysin may be of the nature of an enzyme, or perhaps something similar to the “lysozyme” present in certain animal secretions, described by Fleming (1922). Both the lytic and inhibitory principles vary in amount in individual ticks, and neither is inactivated by exposure to a temperature of 58° C. for thirty minutes.

In all cases of ticks fed on bacterial cultures the micro-organisms remained within the confines of the alimentary canal, and no evidence of invasion of the haemocoele was found. Defaecation was the only process by which bacteria were found to leave the tick, and as only a few types were passed in this way, and defaecation occurs only at long intervals, and not as a rule during feeding, it seems very improbable that Argas persicus could be an efficient vector of any of the bacterial viruses employed in this work.

The genus Raillietostrongylus Lane, 1923, was essentially characterized by the presence of “rudimentary subventral semilunes” guarding its oral aperture. In its type and only species R. samoensis Lane, 1923, these structures were described as “most rudimentary.”. Cameron (1924) states bluntly that cutting plates do not exist in this species, so that he can see no reason for removing it from the genus Globocephalus. The natural implication of the wording is that in designating the new genus a seriously inaccurate observation was recorded.

The genus Clavella Oken, 1815, comprises parasitic Copepods belonging to the family Lernaeopodidae. The object of this paper is to dwell upon the following characteristics of the genus:

Members of the genus Clavella are pre-eminently parasitic on Gadoid fishes. (Four British species not occurring on Gadoids have already been removed to other genera; one doubtful species will probably have to follow, and I am suggesting the removal of two more.)

Great confusion prevails in literature with regard to the various species of nematode worms inhabiting the air-passages and blood-vessels of whales, porpoises and dolphins. These worms form a group analogous, and, as we believe, very closely related to the genera Metastrongylus, Dictyocaulus, Synthetocaulus, and Haemostrongylus, which occur in similar situations in terrestrial mammals. The genera named are referred to the family Meta-strongylidae Leiper (1908), as restricted by the exclusion of the forms now included in the family Trichostrongylidae Leiper (1912). The forms found in Cetacea, of which the typical genus is Pseudalius, have been ranked first as a subfamily Pseudaliinae of “Strongylidae” by Railliet and Henry (1909) and later as a family Pseudaliidae of Strongyloidea by Railliet (1916).