SOCIETIES. 



189 



posed, the Rev. F. D. Morice, M.A., was declared to have been elected 

 President for the current year. The ordinary meeting followed 

 immediately, the Rev. F. D. Morice, President, in the chair. The 

 President addressed a few words to the Society, thanking them for 

 their choice of him for the post, and expressing regret for the circum- 

 stances wdiich had made an election necessary. — -Messrs. George 

 Moffatt Carson, Entomologist to the Government of New Guinea, 

 Port Moresby, New Guinea ; Alfred George Scorer, Hill Crest, 

 Chilworth, Guildford ; Percy William Affleck Scott, Chinese Imperial 

 Customs Service, Hangchow, China; Noel Stanton Sennett, 32, Bolton 

 Gardens, South Kensington, S.W. ; James A. Simes, 2, The Byre, 

 Whitehall Road, Woodford, Essex ; P. H. Tautz, Cranleigh, Nower 

 Hill, Pinner, Middlesex ; R. G. Todd, The Limes, Hadley Green, N. ; 

 R. Vitalis, Commis de 1" classe, Tresor, Pnom-Penk, Cambodia, 

 French Indo-China ; and Rev. W. G. Wittingham, Knighton Rectory, 

 Leicester, were elected Fellows of the Society. — The President 

 announced that he had appointed Dr. F. A. Dixey, M.A., M.D., 

 F.R.S., and Messrs. G. T. Bethune-Baker, F.L.S., F.Z.S., and H. St. 

 J. Donisthorpe, F.Z.S., to act as Vice-Presidents for the current 

 year. — Mr. H. St. J. Donisthorpe exhibited a nest of Lasius umbratus, 

 Nyl., which had accepted a 2 L. fidiginosus. On December 13th a 

 dealated $ L. fuliginosus was put into a small plaster nest with a 

 dozen of the umhratus ^ ^ ; she was slightly attacked, but not in 

 any way injured, and tried to conciliate the 5^ ^ by stroking them 

 with her antennae ; she protected her waist by crossing the back legs 

 over it, and her neck by pressing the head back against the thorax. 

 By December 21st she was accepted by the whole nest, and has been 

 treated as their queen ever since. Only one or two ^ ^ occasionally 

 threatened her with their jaws, though the ^vst fidiginosus $ placed 

 in the nest was killed. The ^ 5 killed most of their own virgin ? ? . 

 — Mr. W. C. Crawley also exhibited a case containing a colony of 

 Lasius umhratus with a L. fuliginosus 2 as queen, and a colony of 

 L. 7iiger with a L. umbratus queen. He mentioned that dealated 

 ? $ do not always behave as if fertilized, the ? in this nest being 

 restless as the winged $ ? are before the marriage flight. — Dr. 

 Chapman began a discussion as to whether this form of " para- 

 sitism " was in the long run profitable to the parasitised species, by 

 weeding out the weaker nests ; the President, Mr. Yerrall, and Mr. 

 G. A. K. Marshall also joined in the discussion. — Mr. F. Merrifield 

 exhibited 134 specimens of Selenia bilunaria, and read a short paper 

 on the question whether temperature in the pupal stage may affect 

 the size of the imago in some Heterocera. His experiments showed 

 that in every case the imagines from the cooled pupae are, on the 

 average, larger than those from the forced, the difference ranging in 

 the males from 1*3 to 20-8 per cent, (averaging 13-6 or 13-9), in the 

 females from 0-7 to 9-5 per cent, (averaging 3-3 or 3-6). It seemed to 

 him that the difference was too great and too ditt'used, embracing as 

 it does each sex in five separate families, to be explained in any other 

 way than this: that it is caused by something that, in consequence 

 of the difference in' temperature, happened to either those forced or 

 those cooled, or both of them, in the pupal stage. — Mr. H. Main 

 exhibited a stereoscopic photograph of the cocoon of Ghrysopa flava, 



