42 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



that ill the caterpillar of the spurge moth. The latter eats almost con- 

 tinuously ; a full crop may serve the beetle for 24 hours. The secretory 

 activity of the intercrypt-cells and villus-cells seems to be interrupted 

 for considerable intervals, so that these elements may also be absorptive. 

 The crypt-cells of the posterior mid-gut and the cells of the smooth crypt- 

 portion of the anterior mid-gut, which, with the crypts, are absent in the 

 caterpillar, are purely secretory. In the caterpillar there are two kinds 

 of secretory cells — kalykocytes and spkasrocytes ; in the beetle there is 

 only one kind, comparable to spheerocytes. In the beetle there is a con- 

 tinuous separation and regeneration of cells or small cell-groups. In 

 both caterpillar and beetle the same cell may form secretion repeatedly. 

 There are no preformed openings for the escape of the secretion. The 

 whole cell passes into the lumen of the gut. 



Beetles in Ants' Nests.* — Arthur M. Lea records a large number 

 of Australian and Tasmanian Coleoptera inhabiting or resorting to the 

 nests of ants. A number were found along with two species of termite 

 and along with the hive-bee and Trigona carbonaria. The paper is 

 purely systematic. 



Insects in Nepenthes Pitchers. f — J. C. H. de Meijere and Hj. 

 Jensen have studied the insects which develop in the pitchers of Ne- 

 penthes. No fewer than seven species of Diptera were reared from larvse 

 taken from the pitchers — four Culicidee, two Phoridse, and an Antho- 

 myid, Phaonia nepentliicola. Jensen put a small pill of albumen in a 

 pepsin solution, and added the juice of the larvae. He found that this 

 delayed the action of the peptic ferment, and the inference is that the 

 larvae have an anti-ferment which enables them to resist the digestive 

 juice in the pitchers. 



Beginning of Muscular Phagocytosis in Larval Muscids.J — Ch. 

 Perez has observed that leucocytes penetrate absolutely healthy sarco- 

 lemma, and get into absolutely normal sarcoplasm. The disintegration 

 of the sarcoplasm and the degeneration of the muscle-nuclei do not 

 begin until the leucocytes have found their way in. 



Metamorphosis of Intestinal Musculature in Muscid Larvae.§ — 

 Ch. Perez finds that the mid-gut musculature is a network of circular 

 and longitudinal fibres, which contracts into a compact sheath at the 

 beginning of pupation. When the imaginal epithelium forms a con- 

 tinuous layer, the larval musculature undergoes phagocytosis. But the 

 muscle-nuclei persist, and only the myoplasm is engulfed. The nuclei 

 become the nuclei of new muscle elements, and the regeneration is 

 accompanied by direct nuclear division. 



Habits of Procession Caterpillar.|| — H. H. Brindley adds some 

 fresh observations on the habits of the procession caterpillar, Cnethocampus 

 pinivora, to those made by him in 1901, and by T. G. Edwards in 1909. 



* Proc. R. Soc. Victoria, xxiii. (1910) pp. 11G-230 (3 pis.). 



t Ann. Jard. Bot. Buitenzorg, iii. (1910) pp. 917-46 (4 pis.). See also Zool. 

 Zentralbl., xvii. (1910) pp. 679-80. 



% P.V. Soc. Sci. Bordeaux, 1909, pp. 25-6. § Tom. cit., p. 34. 



|| Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc, xv. (1910) pp. 576-87 (2 pis.). 



