1887. J 189 



one larva, and I hare not yet seen anything approaching the 12 or more in one leaf 

 that Prof. Frey speaks of. The mine, at first a slender line running usually along 

 the edge of the leaf for some distance, widens into a broad twisting gallery, in which 

 the coils coalesce, and form a sort of false blotch. — John H. Wood, Tarrington, 

 Ledbury : December 15<A, 1886. 



Scottish Coleoptera. — Having authenticated one record in Murray's " Coleopfera 

 of Scotland," I must now proceed to relegate two others to the category of delenda. 

 My excuse for not having done this sooner must be, that until within the last three or 

 four years, I have not been working at Coleoptera for a long time. Certainly, Mala- 

 chius virklis was never taken by me at Ormiston (p. 57), and the record must have 

 arisen through some misapprehension on Murray's part. Nor did I ever (p. 49) take 

 Aphodius quadrimaculatus on the Pentlands, or anywhere else in Scotland. The 

 insects taken on the Pentlands, and which were recorded by Murray as 4-jnactdatus, 

 and mentioned by Hardy in the Catalogue of the Insects of Northumberland and 

 Dui'ham, under the name of uliginosiis, were putridiis (ioreaJis, Gyll.). I have, 

 however, another of Murray's insects to substantiate as Scottish, viz., Barypeithes 

 hrunnipes, 01., which occurs in a meadow in this neighbourhood, and also at Dud- 

 dingston, where I took it more than thirty years ago. Dr. Sharp says, " I have not 

 seen any individual found in Scotland of the species " (Scot. Nat., vol. v, p. 137). — 

 R. F. Logan, Colinton, Midlothian : December, 1886. 



Scarcity of Wasps. — The abundance of $ wasps (Vespa species) in the spring, 

 and the scarcity of wasps in the autumn of this year, were both marked circum- 

 stances here, and the same facts were so general, that comment on them may be met 

 with in papers and journals that do not usually notice such matters. In May plenty 

 of the suspended nests of those species that build above ground were to be met 

 with, but the weather of May and June were so unfavourable to wasp life by pre- 

 venting the queen mother from foraging, that a wasp was a rare insect for the rest of 

 the season, nearly all colonies perishing. Hive-bees sulfered similarly, and it was 

 not till July that a laying up of stores that should be largely done in May and June 

 could be commenced. At the end of October I met with another illustration of the 

 same conditions. On a bank of earth protected from rain by overhanging turf were 

 the remains of many of tlie filagree tubes of Odytierns spinipes. If the nidification 

 had been completed, portions of these should have been used to stop the mouths of 

 the burrows : I found no burrows so stopped, and on excavating seven burrows I 

 found three of them with only one spinipes cocoon at the bottom, and the other four 

 empty. I went no further, not wishing to assist the extinction of an old favourite ; 

 I never before met with a spinipes colony where things had gone so disastrously. — 

 T. A. Chapman, Hereford : November 13th, 1886. 



The Stkttctuee and Life-Histoey of the Cockroach : an Inteodtjction 

 TO THE Study of Insects. By Prof. L. C. Miall and Alfeed Denny. Pp. 



