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is exceedingly minute ; the largest of the specimens I have yet 

 seen scarcely attaining to one-eighth of an inch in length. When 

 examined, however, in the microscope, it is an elegant insect, and, 

 properly mounted as an opaque object, it makes a fine binocular 

 slide for the low powers. Very little appears at present to be 

 known with respect to its habits and economy. 



" Mr. S. Green says : — ' It is common here, and hundreds of 

 examples may be found upon a single plant. Those I now 

 enclose were dried between the leaves of a book, and afterwards 

 exposed for a couple of hours to the direct rays of a hot sun. All 

 I can say of its habits is that it sticks close to the under side of 

 the Bringall leaf, and there undergoes all its changes, from the 

 larval to the perfect state. The larvne are black. 



" Tingis is a genus of Fabricius, described in the ' Systema 

 Rhyngotorum ' (p. 124). Various species of Tiu^i's are found 

 nearly all over the world. In the cabinet of the British Museum 

 may be seen specimens from England and France, some of them 

 nearly as small as the species here figured ; as well as several from 

 Africa, North America, and the Philippine Islands. Other species 

 are found in Sweden^ and in fact all over Europe. A large 

 number inhabit South America, and four or five have been taken 

 in the island of Ceylon. The distribution of the genus may 

 therefore well be called 'world-wide.' The character which at 

 once distinguishes the Titigis hystricellus from all other known 

 species of the genus is the complete armature of spines, which 

 project from various parts of the head, thorax, and elytra. Each 

 of these spines, when examined by a somewhat higher power, is 

 found to have a sharp point or seta, ]^rojecting as from the open 

 end of an investing sheath. The integument of the elytra, as 

 well as that composing the dorsal surface of the thorax, appears 

 like a thin membrane nearly as transparent as glass, supported by 

 a strong reticulation bearing the spines, which radiate in every 

 direction. The metathorax extends far backwards, simulating, as 

 it does in many allied genera, a large-pointed scutellum. The 

 pupa is exceedingly interesting, being of a dark brown colour, and 

 covered with white spines ; those along the sides of the abdomen 

 are compound or branched, and each branch has a projecting seta. 

 These compound spines are not found on the imago insect. 



" Some of the species in the cabinet of the British Museum are 

 very beautiful, not only in form, but in colour. They all show a 

 tendency to a reticulated structure of the elytra ; but the present 

 species differs from all of them in the quantity of spines bristling 

 over the dorsal surface. It is, in fact, a little insect porcupine, 

 and fully justifies the specific name of hystricellus." 



This object should be viewed with the paraboloid. 



Thos. Curties. 



