238 [March, 



only succeeded in breeding one specimen last June. On May 29th however, I took 

 a lovely example by beating. I should have announced the capture of this rare 

 species before, but could not fully satisfy myself about it and delayed submitting my 

 specimen to a more competent authority. In the autumn of last year I again met 

 with several larvce, and hope to see the perfect insect in due course. It seems very 

 scai'ce and local, for though aspen abounds in most of the larger woods hereabouts, 

 I have only found hostilis in one locality, though I have searched for it well elsewhere. 



At the end of last September, when beating oak, a considerable number of 

 another " knot-horn " larva tumbled into my umbrella. These I at first hoped might 

 be Cryptoblabes bistrigella, but they were so common that it struck me they might 

 more probably be young larvae of Rhodophcza consociella, which is abundant in the 

 locality ; I therefore only boxed about a dozen. Some of these were ichneumoned, 

 but others became pupae later on, thus proving that they could not be consociella, 

 and driving me back to the conclusion that my first impression was most likely 

 correct. 



Bistrigella generally turns up here every season, but is always very rare in the 

 perfect state. I also met last autumn with G-ymnancyla canella, the larvae of which 

 were tenanting several plants of Salsola kali on a retired part of the Essex coast. — 

 W. H. Harwood, 8, West Stockwell Street, Colchester: 14th February, 1881. 



On the Stridulation of Acherontia. — Dr. Laboulbene takes exception, in the 

 " Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France" (5™e Serie, t. vii [1877], Bull., 

 p. lv), in regard to my failing to quote a paper he had published on the stridulation 

 of the Death's-Head Sphinx, when I, in reply to Mr. Moseley, tried to establish 

 the mechanical nature of this sound in the Ent. Mo. Mag., vol. xiii, pp. 217 — 220. 

 His experience is as follows : — " Eventually I wished to see in what manner the 

 animal arranged the fan of hairs lying in the fold. This fold is formed of a dry 

 rough skin fcomme scarieuse), especially at the margin of the first segment where it 

 rests on the second. I passed beneath this dry skin the blunt point of a little steel 

 rod, and not only did I succeed in thus arranging the hairs, but, to my satisfaction, I 

 heard a sound, feeble, but very similar to the cry of the living animal. I repeated 

 the same manoeuvre, by pressing on the skin behind the fold and a little higher up 

 on the first segment, and every time I caused the hair to fall into its place almost 

 invariably I elicited the cry. The reason of this appeared attributable to the 

 contraction of the muscles as they shut the fold with its dry membrane, and perhaps 

 also to the friction of the rough skin of the first abdominal segment on the second." 



As the Death's-Head Sphinx has not been common in this district since the 

 autumn of 1878, I have not been able to make further observations on its cry, but if 

 the true sound can be elicited as Mons. Laboulbene would affirm, I perhaps may 

 suggest that I find a much more suitable structure for its production in the hinder 

 pieces of the meso-sternum, which on their inner surface are distinctly liinaform. — ■ 

 A. H. Swinton, Binfield House, Guildford : 3rd February, 1881. 



l&tvitw. 



A Treatise on Comparative Embryology : by Francis M. Balfour, 

 M.A., F.R.S , Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge. 8vo, 2 vols. 

 Yol. I, pp. v— vii, 1—492, and i— xxii. London : Macmillan & Co., 1880. 



An extremely useful summary of what is known on this subject at the present 

 time, judiciously arranged and well illustrated with woodcuts. Although Entomo- 



