INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1874. cliii 



The habits of the white ants have been studied by Fritz 

 Miiller in Brazil. Besides the winged males and females, 

 which are produced in vast numbers, there are wingless 

 males and females which never leave the nest, and which re- 

 place the winged males or females whenever a community 

 does not find in due time a true king or queen. Besides 

 this, in some species there are two sets of workers, i. e., la- 

 borers and soldiers, as stated by Smeathman, so that we have 

 six kinds of individuals in a species. 



A fossil Cicada has been found in the Miocene tertiary for- 

 mation of Europe by M. Saporta. It is the first fossil species 

 found, and belongs to a ^enus now confined to Southern Africa. 



Sir John Lubbock questions the truth of the theory that 

 insects have a language, and concludes that they do not 

 communicate their discoveries to each other. He states that, 

 as far as his experience goes, bees which have stung and lost 

 their stings always die. They are much affected by light. 

 "One evening," he remarks, "I lighted a small covered lamp 

 to go down to the cellar. A bee which was out came to it, 

 and, flying round and round like a moth, followed me the 

 whole of the way there." It is clear, he states, that bees can 

 distinguish colors. He found that bees would never take 

 any notice of the many different noises he made to attract 

 their attention. The temper of bees is very variable, gener- 

 ally not irritable ; at other times they stung him several times 

 a day, and " seemed the more prone to do so the hotter the 

 weather." Wasps are as busy as bees. They are as insen- 

 sible to sounds as bees. 



The most important embryological paper of the year on 

 insects is one, beautifully illustrated, by Metsclmikoff, on the 

 development of the thousand-leg Myriopods. He finds a 

 close resemblance in their development to that of the Podura. 

 The egg undergoes total segmentation. We had previously 

 no observations of any value on the growth in the egg of 

 this sub-class of insects. The Myriopods of Mexico have 

 been described by De Saussure and Humbert. 



The first volume of an elaborate and very useful work on 

 the spiders of France, by M.Simon, with some excellent plates, 

 will interest American students of these neglected animals. 

 Some interesting notes on the habits of web-building spiders 

 have been given out by Professor Wilder. 



