April iSS4.) 



PSYCHE. 



163 



ENTOMOLOGICAL ITEMS. 



The Natural history socictv at Sprinj;- 

 fickl, Mass., proposes to begin an insect col- 

 lection. 



M. Adriex Dollfus, the editor of the 

 Fciiitle deajciiiief- naiiirnti'sfcs, at 35, iiie 

 Pierre-Charron, Paris, France, desires to ex- 

 change European oiiiscoihi tor American spe- 

 cies. 



The January numero of the American col- 

 lege directory, published at St. Louis. Mo., 

 contains a portrait of Dr. C : V. Riley, of 

 Washington. D. C, with a brief notice of 

 his life. 



The Dollfu.s prize of the French entom- 

 ological society is awai-ded. for the year 1SS3, 

 liy M. Ernest Andre, for his work entitled 

 "Spdcies des formicide.s d'Europe et des pays 

 limitrophes." 



Dh. Grass: has found that flies fed with 

 materials which contain eggs of worms leaye 

 these eggs in their excrement, and that con- 

 sequently meat which was exposed to the vis- 

 its of the flies could help in distributing para- 

 sites. 



In the November session of the zoolog- 

 ical section of the Westfalischer provincial- 

 verein fiir wissenschaft und kunst, Mr. Piitt 

 showed the crop of a pheasant which was 

 full of larvae, about 15 millimetres long, 

 belonging to some species of diptera. 

 There were 411 larvae in the crop. 



It is announced that the Russian grand- 

 duke Nikolai Michailowitsh, eldest son of 

 grand-duke Michail, intends to issue in parts 

 a fine work under the title "Menioires lepi- 

 dopterologiques," the basis for which will be 

 his own large collection of lepidoptera. rich 

 in species which he collected in the Cau- 

 casus. 



We learn from the Entoniologiits inoiit/ily 

 magazine that the Ra\' society has accjuired 

 the late Mr. William Buckler's drawings of 

 the larvK of British macrolepidoptera, to- 

 getherwith the voluminous manuscript which 

 accompanies them, and they will probably 

 form the subject for three or four yolumes of 

 the society's publications. 



Dr. H. a. Hagen, in a letter to Science for 

 II April 1SS4, shows that the Hessian fly was 

 known by that name in the United States be- 

 fore the Revolution. Qiiotations are given 

 from the minutes of the American philosoph- 

 ical society of Philadelphia, as earlv as iS 

 May 176S, where the committee on husbandry 

 was "to consider whether any method can be 

 fallen upon tor preventing the damage done 

 to wheat by the Hessian fly." 



In a brief suminary of the European spe- 

 cies of lepidoptera with apterous or subapter- 

 ous females, by Dr. R. C. R. Jordan, in the 

 £niomologisr's montlily magazine for March 

 1S84, it is shown that wingless lepidoptei'a 

 exist in the following families : /ictcrogynidae, 

 nrctiidae, hepialidae, psychidae (all species), 

 lifinridac, uocli/idae (one species, Ulochlacna 

 iiirta), geometridae, fyralidae (part of the 

 females of Aceu/ropiis niveiis, which oviposit 

 under water), fortricidac. tineidac. and tal- 

 acporidae. 



Dr. Layet, of Bordeaux, has studied an 

 eruptive disease to which workers in a large 

 vanilla warehouse in that place are subject, 

 and found that the disease is caused by a lit- 

 tle insect (Acariis) which is found upon the 

 outer end of the vanilla capsules. The in- 

 sect does not boi'e into the skin, but causes 

 the irritation by contact, aided perhaps by 

 the mechanical action of acicular crystals 

 which are upon the outside of the capsules. 



The poisonous properties of carbon disul- 

 phide [CS2] have been investigated bv a 

 number of doctors in California. The results 

 show that continued breathing of carbon 

 disulphide produces derangement. As is 

 well known, carbon disulphide has been ex- 

 tensively used in the wine-producing districts 

 of California against phylloxera, and a num- 

 ber of workmen, who were engaged in the 

 wine districts, have becomeinsane. — Dculs-cli- 

 anier. apotk.-zeitung, /j Feb. 18S4., p, 736. 



The numero of the Entomologist for March 

 1S84 contains a note entitled "Description of 

 a Pieris new to science. — Pier is spilleri, mi- 

 hi. By A. J. Spiller," in Ayhich Mr. Spiller 



