The life history of Ornithodoros graingeri under laboratory conditions at 28° C. and 95% humidity, can be summarized as shown in Table 4. These figures, except for the fourth-stage nymphs, include the interval between emergence and willingness to feed.

Vector biology has become a fast moving field. Spurred on by the recent exciting advances in the molecular biology, genomics and latterly proteomics of vector insects and their pathogens, researchers are using new approaches and our knowledge is rapidly increasing. The second edition of this volume very much reflects these advances. The editor, William Marquardt, has assembled a team of section editors to oversee the production of 57 short chapters, divided into 7 parts. With a few exceptions, these experts are drawn from the USA, a reflection no doubt of the history of the first edition which was produced to accompany the Biology of Vector Disease course, given at Colorado State University. The text is aimed at post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers, working in a range of areas associated with vector biology and vector-borne diseases. It provides an excellent opportunity to obtain an initial overview of a new area or to dip into a field that may be peripheral to the topic under investigation.

1. The morphology of an Entamoeba from the Sudanese lizards Mabuya quinquetaeniata, M. striata and Tarentola annularis is described. It was similar to Entamoeba coli of man.

2. It is referred to the species E. flaviviridis, Knowles & Das Gupta (1935).

3. An ‘Amoeba’ was observed in Tarentola annularis which was similar in size to the Entamoeba. The nuclear structure, however, was distinctive, with a very large karyosome and no peripheral chromatin. The cysts were uninucleate.

4. It is very similar to the organism described as Vahlkampfia reynoldsi by McFall (1926).

In 1916 Dr J. C. Becker made the interesting discovery of Bilharzia infection in Physopsis africana collected at Nijlstroom in the Transvaal and obtained the adult flukes in some guinea-pigs he had exposed to infection with the cercariae. The town of Nijlstroom is situated at the source of a tributary of the Limpopo river at an altitude of 3924 feet above the Indian Ocean into which it flows. In 1917 I collected2 infested examples of P. africana at Magaliesburg, a popular picnic place for Krugersdorp residents, situated on a branch of the Little Crocodile river which later joins the Limpopo. Magaliesburg has an altitude of 5000 feet above sea-level. I also obtained infested examples from Rustenburg, thus revealing a further source of infection from tributaries of the Little Crocodile river, at an altitude of over 4000 feet.

The Chalcidoid wasp, Bairamlia fuscipes, was found parasitising the flea Ceratophyllus wickhami in the nest of the North American Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) from Gerrard's Cross.

The larval and pupal stages of B. fuscipes were found in the cocoons of C. wickhami, and the adults were crawling about in the squirrel's nest.

The parasites were scarce, only 7 per cent, of the cocoons dissected at intervals during fifteen months were parasitised.

The parasite has not been reared in the laboratory beyond the second instar larva, though full grown larvae have successfully reached maturity under experimental conditions.

B. fuscipes oviposits through the flea cocoon and fixes the egg on the abdomen of a resting larva or pupa. Only one egg has been found in each parasitised cocoon. The larva feeds externally on the flea, fixing itself to the fourth abdominal segment or thereabouts.

Attempts were made to parasitise larvae of Xenopsylla astia, but without success.

The external anatomy of the full grown larva of B. fuscipes is described.

The nomenclature of the parasitic flagellates of invertebrates is in such a state of chaos at the present time, that I have collected the history of the three more important genera Leptomonas, Herpetomonas, and Crithidia, in the hope that it will end the controversies which surround the application of any one of these names.

Eimeria phasiani was shown to be pathogenic to young pheasant poults. Doses of 100000 or more oocysts proved fatal to birds up to 3 weeks old. Lesser doses produced losses in the live-weight gain of the host.

Two separate strains of E. phasiani were completely susceptible to 0·006% (w/w) Sulphaquinoxaline, but less so to 0·006% (w/w) Amprolium and 0·0125% (w/w) Zoalene.

I should like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr E. U. Canning for her supervision and helpful advice, and to Professor O. W. Richards, F.R.S., for permission to work at the Imperial College Field Station. I am also grateful to Mr T. H. Blank, of the Eley Game Advisory Service, Fordingbridge, Hants, who gave day-old pheasant chicks for this study.

The work was financed by a scholarship from the Agricultural Research Council.

In a previous paper (Sinha, 1954), dealing with a collection of larval trombiculids from Manipur, India, four new species, a new subgenus (Plumosicola), and a new genus (Mehracula) were described. The larvae concerned had been mounted in batches, each slide containing considerable numbers. At the request of Dr J. R. Audy, Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur, the type material was lent to him in 1956 through the kind co-operation of Dr A. P. Kapur, in charge of the Entomology Section, Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta, in whose care the types had been deposited, and who gave permission for the specimens to be remounted individually in PVA-mountant.

The trematodes described below were collected at the Marine Biological Station at Ghardaga, Red Sea.

Type specimens are deposited in the Department of Parasitology of Faculty of Medicine, Abbassia, Egypt.

All measurements are in millimetres.

During the early years of this century, several new species of ticks were described from Western Australia, but since then the group has been neglected, with the result that no species have been added since 1909. In the course of some recent studies of the local ticks, an undescribed species of the genus Ixodes was obtained, of which a description is now given.

Dr Woodland kindly submitted to me the majority of the worms recovered by him on dissecting the mice used in his very interesting experiment (see his paper that follows), with a request for my opinion as to the identity of the species. The material, which was handed to me preserved in formalin, consisted only in part of complete specimens, a number of the worms having been broken up during collection. I stained most of the whole specimens with dilute haematoxylin and mounted them in Canada balsam. Upon microscopic examination it became evident that the specimens were of various ages and degrees of maturity, and one specimen was of exceptionally large size. This individual, in a fairly contracted condition, measures (after mounting and without stretching) 36 mm. in length, and has about 650 recognisable segments. Mature segments (i.e. segments with testes and ovary both fully developed) begin to appear-at about the 320th segment from the scolex, and gravid segments at about the 490th. There are thus about 160 gravid segments. It will be evident from these details that this specimen agrees with my description of “Hymenolepis longior.” Two of the young forms among Dr Woodland's material also seemed to agree with “H. longior” rather than with what I had regarded as H. nana.

A number of trematode parasites were taken from the digestive tract of a red-bellied watersnake, Farancia abacura (Holbrook), on 27 March 1933. This snake had been captured on the previous day from a canal at Harvey, Louisiana. The parasites were studied while still alive and were tentatively identified before being fixed with formalin while under the pressure of a cover-slip. Representatives of three genera were encountered. Two of the species, representing two separate genera, are considered by us to be new to science and are herein described under the proposed names of Cercorchis auridistomi n.sp. and Stomatrema guberleti n.sp. The third species was recognized as Vitellotrema fusipora Guberlet, 1928.