39 



MAY 12th, 1921. 

 Mr. Stanley Edwards, F.L.S., Vice-president, in the Chair, 



Mr. L. N. Staniland, of Muswell Hill, was elected a member. 



Professor Cockerell, who came as a visitor, exhibited numerous 

 fossil insects from the Mid-Tertiary strata of the Isle of Wight ; 

 also a series of drawings of new species of fossil flies which he was 

 describing in the Annah and Mai/azine of Natural Hixtnii/. 



Mr. Lyle exhibited some cocoons of the Braconid Meteoriis 

 alhiditarsiis, a parasite on Biipalns jiiniperda, and a skein of silk 

 which he had wound from two of their cocoons. He also exhibited 

 a section of a large stem of the common laurel in which was a 

 natural discoloration in the form of a butterfly with spread wings, 

 and referred to the legendary accounts of butterflies getting into 

 the heart of a tree and being there embedded and subsequently 

 producing an impression as exhibited. Mr. Step remarked that the 

 discoloration was probably caused by a fungus attack and that the 

 shape was purely accidental. 



Mr. Step exhibited the nests of Sceliphroii inadraspatajuis, the 

 Muddauber Wasp, from Calcutta. These had been built in his 

 daughter's callers' card-box, the entrance to which was a slit a 

 quarter of an inch wide. Through this narrow opening the 

 females had conveyed all their mud and the large hairy spiders 

 with which the cells were provisioned. Half a dozen wasps 

 emerged from the cells during the voyage home, 



Mr. Eobert Adkin exhibited a portion of a wallflower 

 (C/ieira)ithiis) from his garden at Eastbourne, in which the flowers 

 were imperfect in that the petals were absent. In other respects 

 the flowers appeared to be complete, but the normal erect position 

 of the sepals gave them the appearance of being unexpanded. 

 The whole plant was similarly affected, 



Mr. Barnett exhibited several examples of the natter- jack toad 

 {I)iift) calaiiiita) from South Spain. 



Mr. S. R. Ashby exhibited the collection of British Earwigs, 

 Cockroaches, Grasshoppers, Locusts and Crickets formed by the 

 late Curator, Mr. W. West. 



Mr. C. L. Withycombe exhibited a small scorpion [JjuthiiH 

 occita)U(s) from the South of France, a young stage of the South 

 European Mantis {M. rclif/iosa), and some Weevils found on thistles, 

 all sent to him by Mr. H. Main from Provence. He also exhibited 



