ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE. 131 



Sitting of the 18th of January, 1837. 

 M. BoisDUVAL in the Chair. 



The following donations were announced: — 



M. Gkaillls. Statutes of the Royal Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences at Barcelona. 



M. GuERiN communicated to the Society that he had 

 received from the Isle of Cuba, by the hands of M. Poey, a 

 species of PorcelUo nearly related to PorcelUo rudis^ of the 

 neighbourhood of Paris, but still quite distinct from that 

 insect; and he proposed to call it PorcelUo Poeyi. " For a 

 long time," said M. Guerin, " the inhabitants of the Isle of 

 Cuba have assured me that they find at Havannah the PorcelUo 

 which is so common in our houses ; they were so persuaded 

 of its identity with ours, that they have never sent it me. Not 

 agreeing in this opinion, I pressed its being transmitted to me, 

 thinking it would prove a different species ; and if not, we 

 should at least be furnished, by its presence in both countries, 

 with an interesting fact in entomological geography. At last 

 I have received a considerable number of this insect, and find 

 they belong, like ours, to the subgenus PorcelUo of Latreille ; 

 at first they appear exceedingly like the PorcelUo rudis of our 

 houses, but on a closer comparison I find they differ strikingly 

 in the form of the head and antennae, in the proportion of the 

 abdominal set^e, and especially in the six anterior feet, which 

 are furnished below with brushes formed of clavated spines, 

 a 'peculiarity which is not observable in any of our species. 

 This complicated formation of the feet may possibly serve to 

 facilitate their progress on smooth and perpendicular surfaces, 

 and seems, in some way, to explain their frequent appearance 

 in the houses of Havannah." M. Guerin announced that he 

 had received at the same time a bottle containing twenty thou- 

 sand specimens of the Aphodius nmrginellus of Fabricius. 



M. Gervais communicated to the Society a portion of the 

 result of his researches into the semi-metamorphosis in Myrla- 

 poda ; he stated, that in lulus the variations bear not only on 

 the number of segments of the body and number of legs, but 

 also on the eyes, which are far less numerous in the young than 

 in the adult Tulus, and the appearance of which takes place in 

 a very regular manner. The Lithobii also undergo a semi- 

 metamorphosis : the number of the segments of the body, that 



