366 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov.. 1S93. 



Chalcididae, and which include in their number some of the most 

 minute and shghtly-formed of all the Hymenoptera. These are the 

 Proctotrupidae, several of which, belonging to the genus Ceraphron, are 

 connected with the oak-apple, where I have found them in all stages 

 of their development. Unlike the Callimome, these Ceraphrons do not 

 lay a single egg on the outside of their host, but, on the contrary, 

 deposit a number ivithin its body. Here the contained eggs are 

 shortly hatched, and the resulting grubs begin to devour the fatty 

 substance of the attacked larva, until, in its dry and inflated skin, 

 they find a comfortable, cocoon-like home in which to pass their 

 further metamorphoses. 



Perhaps, in their case, as in that of their predecessors the 

 Callimomes, other families of entomophagous parasites attack and 

 thin the ranks of the Proctotrupidae, and in so doing maintain, though, 

 as it would seem, under conditions of more than Bulgarian atrocity, 

 the necessary balance of organic life, 



I only ask, in presence of such facts as these, that amiable, but, 

 as I venture to think, mistaken " Zoophilists," when they declaim 

 against the cruelties of scientific investigators, and seek by penal 

 legislation to check the progress of human knowledge, should bear in 

 mind the actual course of Nature's dealings, and believe that in this, 

 as in other things, Man, like the Creator, 



" From seeming evil still educes good, 

 And better thence again, and better still 

 In infinite progression." 



G. B. ROTHERA. 



