1870.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 209 



Mr. Billings has contributed two papers in the department of 

 paloeontology. In the first, he shows that the puzzling fossils 

 called Scolithus and ArenicoUtes are not the burrows of marine 

 worm?, as was formerly supposed, but casts of sponges. In the 

 other, he states that marine univalve molluscs, of the genus 

 Oj)Jiileta, occur in beds several thousand feet lower down in the 

 ireolojiical series than had been hitherto recorded. 



II. ZOOLOGY. 



Mr. A. S. Ritchie has brought before the Society three 

 suggestive papers in this department of Natural History. In the 

 first, the history of the introduction of the white cabbage butterfly, 

 from Europe to the immediate vicinity of this city, is given. A 

 careful description follows of the species in its three stages, with 

 its peculiar habits, and suggestions are offered as to the best 

 means to be adopted to check the ravages of the caterpillar of 

 this species in our fields and gardens. The second attempts to 

 answer the difficult question : " Why are insects attracted to 

 artificial light ?" The third is an interesting account of the habits 

 of some of our smaller fresh water fishes, reptiles, and crusta- 

 ceans, as observed in the writer's own aquarium. 



Professor E. Bell has contributed observations on the Zoology 

 and Botany of the Nipigon country, a district rarely visited by 

 the naturalist. It is to be regretted that when parties are sent 

 by the Geological Survey to explore places of which little is 

 known, that a Zoological and Botanical investigation of the region 

 in question should not, as in the United States, be made in addi- 

 tion to the Geological Survey. Professor Bell also read a paper 

 on the intelligence of animals. It seems a task of no ordinary 

 difficulty to define where animal instinct ends, and the reasoning 

 power is clearly seen to commence. 



The recent dredgings by Mr. Whiteaves in the Gulf of the 

 St. Lawrence, have added many facts to our knowledge of the 

 creatures which inhabit Canadian seas. The marine mollusca 

 have been carefully monographed, and instead of 60 or 70 species, 

 we now know of nearly 130, the number having been thus nearly 

 doubled. The careful identification of the inhabitants of the 

 deep sea, in addition to its Zoological importance, will do much to 

 illustrate the conditions under which the Canadian post-tertiary 

 peposits have been accumulated. 



