clxii GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



thus have in this and similar experiments examples of the artificial 

 breeding of different varieties of insects at will, and it is not impos- 

 sible that results of a practical nature may follow when applied to 

 some of our injurious species. 



The relation of bees to flowers is discussed by Hermann Miiller in 

 a paper translated in Nature. He calls attention to the interesting 

 facts presented by various groups of Ilymenojitera^ in which occur a 

 series of forms presenting more and more complex life relations, ac- 

 companied by a higher and higher mental organization. The con- 

 sideration of these gradations is calculated to throw much light on 

 the question, " How has the honey-bee acquired its remarkable in- 

 stincts ?" a question which the study of that species alone would, 

 in his oiDinion, do little to solve, but on which the habits and organ- 

 ization of the lower group throw much light. Dr. Miiller, after giv- 

 ing the evolutional history of the sting of the wasf), tracing it up 

 from the ovipositor of the ichneumon-fly and saw-fly, thinks that the 

 various acts by which the solitary wasps protect their young must 

 have at first been arrived at with a consciousness of the object to be 

 effected, but that they have gradually become instinctive, and are 

 now unconsciously inherited from generation to generation. " Still 

 it is," he observes, " impossible to watch a wasp at work without 

 feeling that, with these inherited customs or so-called instinct, much 

 individual effort also comes into play." 



Mr. Riley's eighth report on the noxious and beneficial insects of 

 Missouri contains much valuable information regarding the common 

 and more injurious insects of the Western States, particularly the 

 Colorado potato-beetle, canker-worm, army-worm, the Rocky Mount- 

 ain locust, and the grape phylloxera. Public attention is annually 

 turned to these destructive pests ; and the careful studies of Mr. 

 Riley, set forth in clear, forcible language, will do much toward en- 

 lightening the agricultural mind. If the other states were as intel- 

 ligent and liberal in providing for the publication of such reports, 

 co-operation could be secured between the inhabitants of ditferent 

 states, and the more injurious insects combated and held at bay. 



Among other new entomological tracts are Baron Osten-Sacken's 

 "Prodrome of a Monograph of the Tabanidse of the United States," 

 in which it is stated that there are 102 species of horse-fly (Tabanus) 

 in America north of Mexico, of which twenty are new to science. 



Mr. Scudder publishes in the Bulletin of the Buff"alo Society of 

 Sciences the second part of his synonymic list of the butterflies of 

 North America, and in the Canadian Naturalist figures and describes 

 the hind body of the larva of a dragon-fly and a part of the wing 

 of a cockroach from the carboniferous formation of Cape Breton. 



Dr. Hagen describes some curious insect deformities, such as but- 

 tei-flies with caterpillar heads, etc., in the Memoirs of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology. 



