113 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr. Maiden exhibited specimens of the fungi described in Mr. 

 McAlpine's paper. 



Mr. Steel exhibited a fine sei'ies of beautifully preserved 

 specimens of Peripatus from Australia, Tasmania, and New 

 Zealand. 



Mr. Froggatt exhibited living specimens (^ and 9) of Coelostoma 

 uuatrale, described in 1890 by Mr. Maskell in the Society's Pro- 

 ceedings (Second Series, v., 280). The male is a very beautiful 

 and rare insect Six were taken, round the stump upon which 

 the female was found, the first examjjles the exhibitor had ever 

 seen. 



Mr. Froggatt also exhibited a number of the larvte of the 

 Acacia Goat Moth [_Zeuzera (^Eudoxyla) eucalypti^ victims of an 

 attack of a fungoid growth allied to Gordyceps, and turned into 

 •"vegetable caterpillars," so called. Some of the specimens were 

 cut out of the trunks of Acacias (A. longifoiia) growing near 

 Manly, in which they were found in the tunnels formed by the 

 larva?. Others were from larvpe taken alive and kept in breeding 

 boxes; probably they had become infected previously, as after living 

 for months they changed into similar hard masses. The late Mr. 

 Olliff in one of his latest papers in the Agricultural Gazette upon 

 Australian Entomophytes, in describing the hosts of Cordyceps 

 says that it attacks only subterranean root-feeding larv*, and 

 never those of true wood borers, as so often stated by entomolo- 

 gists. The specimens exhibited bear out his statements, for the 

 fungus concerned is a species without the projecting clubbed 

 growth, which would be at a disadvantage in the confined tunnels 

 of a wood-boring caterpillar. It may belong to the genus 

 Xylostroma, which is often found in the centre of decaying trees. 



The President exhibited a "Cotton-grass Snake" (Typhlops 

 -sp.) forwarded from Menindie, N.S.W., by Mr. A. G. Little. 

 8 



