168 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



M. niacularis, D. T.— Nagambie, Victoria (French) ; Warialda, 

 N.S.W., March 29th (Froggatt). 



M. semiliictuosa, Sm. — Wimmera, Victoria (Fro^/^^ai^); Euther- 

 glen, Victoria (French). 



M. latipes, Sm. — Eutherglen, Victoria (French) ; South 

 AustraHa (Lea, 10710 ; Froggatt coll., 209). 



M. oculipes, Ckll. (possibly= male of aurifrons, Sm.). — Wari- 

 alda, N.S.W., March 29th, 1901 (Froggatt). 



M.serricauda, Ckll.— Manilla, N.S.W., male bred from nest 

 (cell of the usual form, 12 mm. long and 6 wide), January 20th, 

 1902 (Froggatt, 162). Larger than the type (length about 

 10 mm.), with reddish eyes, but otherwise the same. Another 

 male, from Nagambie, Victoria, 1909 (French) is 10 mm. long, 

 and has green eyes. 



NOTES AND OBSEEVATIONS. ' 



Society for the Pbomotion of Nature Eeserves. — We have 

 received the prospectus and appeal of the Society for the Promotion 

 of Nature Eeserves, and an extremely interesting document it is for 

 naturalists in general and entomologists in particular. The objects 

 of the Society are to collect and collate information as to areas of 

 land in the United Kingdom which retain their primitive conditions, 

 and contain rare and local species ; to prepare a scheme showing 

 which such areas should be secured and handed over to the National 

 Trust, and thus safeguarded as national possessions against encroach- 

 ment and destruction. Meanwhile, agreeing that one of the first 

 results of success in this direction will be " to encourage the love of 

 Nature study, and to educate pubHc opinion to a better knowledge 

 of the valueof nature study," we may confidently look forward also 

 to the exercise of more practical means than we have at present to 

 rescue the rarer insects of the British fauna from extinction. And 

 that the entomological aspect of the Nature Eeserve will be carefully 

 considered goes without saying, for among the many distinguished 

 scientists comprising the committee we read the names of Professor 

 E. B. Poulton, F.E.S., the Hon. N. C. Eothschild, Mr. E. G. B. 

 Meade- Waldo, and Mr. W. H. St. Quintin. On the Continent not a 

 few Governments have already done good work for the cause of 

 natural history by enclosing favourable areas, and submitting them 

 to an intelligent system of guardianship ; the wholesale exportation 

 of local lepidoptera and plants has been checked ; and private ov/ners 

 have supplemented official effort by putting suitable land under 

 Government control. A beginning has been made in England with 

 Blakeney, a part of Wicken Een, and the " Euskin Eeserve," near 

 Oxford. But much more remains, and, as Dr. Chalmers Mitchell 

 well put it in his address to the Zoological Section of the British 

 Association at Dundee last year, it is only by the deliberate and con- 

 scious interference of man that the evil wrought by man in this 

 respect has been, and can be in the future, arrested. The present 



