

44S ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



An elaborate essay on the structure of the brain in insects, 

 by J. II. L. FlSgel, illustrated by photographs of microscopic 

 sections, appears in Siebold and Kolliker's ZeitscJirift. He 

 finds that the central body of the brain, present in the adult 

 insects of all orders, is wanting in caterpillars, but not in the 

 larvae of the Hymenoptera. lie thinks this has something to 

 do with the structure of the faceted eyes (absent in cater- 

 pillars). 



Great consternation is occasioned among housekeepers by 

 the ravages in carpets of a beetle allied to the museum pest 

 (Anthrenus) so destructive to stuffed birds and insects. The 

 carpet Anthrenus is a recent European importation, and is 

 destined to be a terrible pest in this country. Mr. J. A. 

 Lintner has given a full account of it, which appears in the 

 American Naturalist for August. The insect originally ap- 

 peared in Albany and neighboring cities, but has proved 

 very destructive to carpets in Cambridge and Greenwood, 

 Mass. It is very insidious in its attacks, and sets at defiance 

 the usual remedies. The free use of benzine or of Persian 

 insect-powder on the carpet seems the best antidote. 



How the little ichneumon -fly (Microg aster) spins, when a 

 larva, its white cylindrical cocoons, is fully shown by Pro- 

 fessor Marshall. The larvae of this insect, which have fed 

 within the body of some grape-vine sphinx (Philampelus), 

 bore through the skin of their host, and then spin a white 

 cocoon. Sometimes a caterpillar will bear about 300 to 400 

 cocoons. 



M. Charles Barrois contributes to the Journal de PAnato- 

 mie, etc., an account of the development of a spider. He 

 claims that at one period of its embryonic life it passes 

 through a "Limulus stage;" but the resemblance of the em- 

 bryo spider to the king-crab, so far as the drawing indicates, 

 is so slight as to be scarcely worthy of mention. 



Mr. Scudder continues, in the Bulletin of Hayden's Uni- 

 ted States Geological Survey of the Territories, his de- 

 scriptions of Western fossil insects ; the last paper treat- 

 ing of the Tertiary insects of the Green River shales, com- 

 prising ants, ichneumons, crane-flies, etc., beetles, bugs, 

 grasshoppers, and dragon-flies, a spider, and a galley-worm 

 (Itdus). 



M. Maurice Girard has communicated to the Entomological 



