Low described a new species belonging to genus Muscina existing in Japan in 1858 and named it Muscina angustif rons. Coquillett recorded 12 specimens of this species in his report in 1898. Since then , however, no one has reported on this species from Japan. The authors have collected many specimens of this species in Tokyo and some other parts of Japan. This species is very common in Tokyo.The authors also collected this species in Kyushu and Hokkaido. Low’s original description was brief and　was made from only one male. Therefore a redescription of this species will be given in this paper.

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Dr. M. Sasa published seven species of murine lice including a new species, Hoplopleura akanezumi , in 1950. These species belonged to two genera and this new species was collected from Apodemus speciosus. In the previous paper the author described tentatively H . akanezumi Sasa, 1950 as a synonym of H. affinis, because these two species were very closely related each other in many respects. Mr. Z. Ono redescribed H . akanezumi in 1955. The author has been able to obtain many specimens from Apodemus speciosus and Apodemus argenteus trapped in various localities of Japan. The author examined these spesimens in detail and found another species besides H. akanezumi among them. This species was hitherto undescribed, therefore it will be described as a new species in the present paper. The figures in this paper were drawn by the author.

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It has been already discovered by Stillmark at the end of 19 th cen­tury that the animal red corpuscle shows the hemagglutination with "Ricin" a poisonous component in castor bean. Araya and Kusunoki have also found several years ago that oil cor­ puscles suspended in the various kinds of body fluids, e.g., urine , saliva, and spinal fluid etc., were agglutinated by addition of ricin as if they had been red corpuscles. In this case, moreover, Araya et al. suggested that the titer for agglutination in the body fluid was likely variable with diseases. Later, further clinical investigations were carried out on this point in detail at Ariga Clinic, Nihon University , and they found that in urine of serious tuberculosis, nephritis, nephrosis and emesis, markedly higher ag­ glutination was shown compared with that observed in normal urine. Araya et al. have assumed that the hemagglutination of corpuscles will be caused by receptor which might exist on the surface of corpuscles to react with ricin , so something the configuration of which resembles to the receptor are liberated in the body fluid and adsorbed on the surface of oil corpuscles, which might give the phenomenon of agglutination of oil corpuscles by ricin. To clarif y the character of such typical phenomenon, human and goat corpuscles, in stead of oil corpuscles, were investigated in the body fluids to observe the hemagglutination with ricin and their characteristic behaviors were found as shown below :

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Recent progress in bioassay and biochemical assay has made it possible to detect the small amount of blood progesterone, which could not be caught before by Corner-Allen (1929) and Clauberg (1930) assay. As for the blood progesterone level during the human menstrual cycles several investigators attempted to determine and reported not so different results, namely they estimated that the blood plasma contained 4 to 10mcg per cubic centimeter as maximal concentration in the luteal stage. However , during the pregnancy which can be regarded as a prolonged luteal stage at least in the first trimester, they could curiously detect no or only small amount of progesterone in the blood. This discrepancy seems to be diffcult to explain. In the present paper it was attempted to re-examine the systemic plasma levels of free progesterone during the human !,gestation period by means of the intrauterine stromal nuclear assay developed by Hooker & Forbes (1947).

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