98 [April, 



saw a heap oi' bniiuble slcin.s lyiii^ tliure, and I'oLinel that sfvural of 

 them contained the cylindrical mud cells ot" the same insect. On the 

 19th and 20th of May six fine specimens of the wasp emerged— all 

 females. As several cells still remained closed I waited for a week or 

 two, and then cautiously opened and examined them. They contained 

 four dead males, all of which seemed to have developed up to the 

 same point — they had coloured properly, but the wings had never 

 expanded. As all the cells had been kept together in glass tubes, I 

 do not know why the fate of the occupants was different, and it cer- 

 tainly seems curious that all the males should have perished and all 

 the females emerged. It is odd, also, that I should in two different 

 winters have found these cells in the same spot aiul under the same 

 circumstances, while I have never been able to find them elsewhere, 

 though I must have examined hundreds of pierced bramble-stems in 

 this neighbourhood in hopes of discovering them. I have only once 

 found a IcBvipes " in the open," and that was a ^ , visiting the flowers 

 of Scrophulm-ia in a ditch near Chobham. 



G. Athalin spinaruvi, P. — The oft-quoted observations of Newport 

 have made this one of" the most familiar names among British sawflies. 

 But whatever may once have been the case, it certainly now does not 

 seem to occur to any alarming extent in this country. In a good 

 many collections of sawflies sent to me for determination I have hardly 

 ever discovered spinaruin, and then only quite old specimens. Tear 

 after year 1 have looked for it myself in turnip fields and on umbellifers, 

 but I never found it in England till this autumn, when at last I secured 

 a few specimens on, 1 believe, Angelica. It is common enough abroad 

 {e.g., South France and Tirol), but even there I have never seen it 

 abounding to such an extent as to threaten any considerable damage to 

 the agriculturists. Perhaps, as Mr. Cameron has suggested, the system 

 of rotating crops is unfavourable to its excessive increase. It would 

 be interesting to know whether there is still any part of England 

 in which it is comuion enough to be really mischievous. 



Brunswick, Woking : 1900. 



Ceuthorrhynchidius mi.vtus, Mills, and Hey, at Porlock. — I aui glad to be able 

 to supplement Mr. Claude Morley's records of this species as a British insect. I 

 took a single specimen of it by evening sweeping on July 4tli, 1900, at Porlock, in 

 Somersetsliire. It occurred in a damp hollow in the dense wood along the sides of 

 the upper part of " Horner Water." Unfortunately I did not recognise the species 

 at the time, or I should certainly have tried for more. Mr. G. C. Champion kindly 

 identified the specimen for me. — W. H. Bennett, 15, Wellington Place, Hastings: 

 February 2Zth, 1901. 



