G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 349 



which surmounts this i ; small as these are, however, they 

 appear to be so important to the animal economy that their 

 excision paralyzes and renders inert the segment from which 

 they are abstracted, and yet, although all that may be iso- 

 lated from them is deprived of motility, the portions left con- 

 nected with them preserve that function ; thus, all but the 

 margin may be cut away, and all such exsection will be ren- 

 dered inactive, but the margin itself, retaining these vesicles, 

 will still manifest, for an indefinite length of time, its con- 

 tractile powers. Some of these facts (e. g., the paralysis of the 

 rectocalyx deprived of its margin) have been known before, 

 but have been explained by the hypothesis that the severance 

 of all the contractile fibres produces a kind of mechanical 

 paralysis, analogous, for example, to disability to use the 

 arms if all the muscles were divided. This explanation does 

 not entirely account for all the manifestations exhibited in 

 the experiments in question, and there is at least a strong 

 probability that the minute dots referred to have a true ner- 

 vous function. 



SCUDDER OX THE BUTTERFLIES OF THE GENUS PAMPHILA. 



A paper has just been published by Mr. Samuel H. Scud- 

 der, in the Memoirs of the Boston Natural History Society, 

 on the butterflies of the genus Pamphila^ in which, after a 

 critical comparison of American and European forms, he 

 comes to the conclusion that, after all, there is no difficulty 

 in distinguishing the common species of Europe from its 

 nearest American relatives. Of American forms he describes 

 eight species, three of them in this work for the first time. 



HABITS OF BEES, WASPS, AND ANTS. 



Sir John Lubbock has recently presented to the Linnrean 

 Society of London some very interesting notes on the habits 

 of bees, wasps, and ants, drawn from his personal observa- 

 tion. The results seem to negative the idea popularly en- 

 tertained that bees have the power of communicating intel- 

 ligence from one to another; also that the working bees have 

 any affection for one another, or for the queen bee independ- 

 ently of the utility of the latter for producing new broods. 

 Bees have a decided taste in color, distinctly preferring blue 

 to orange. Wasps arc (Dr. Watts notwithstanding) of more 



