April— June 1SS5.] 



rSTLllE. 



21)9 



Entomology during the year 1SS3. — 

 An examination of the index of new genera 

 which were established in tlie year 18S3, as 

 given in the lately completed ■' Zoologischer 

 jaliresbericht fiir 1SS3, herausgegeben von der 

 Zoologischen station zu Neapel," under the 

 careful editing of Dr. Paul Mayer and Dr- 

 Wilhelm Giesbrecht (abtheilung i, 1SS5 ; 2, 

 [arthropoda], 3, 4, 1SS4), Leipzig, W. Engel" 

 niann, shows how rapidly our knowledge of 

 insect forms progresses, and consequently 

 also our collections are enriched by new spe- 

 cies. According to this index the majority 

 (455) of the 625 new genera among the in- 

 sects belong to the coleoptera and lepidop- 

 tera, to the former 254, to the latter iot ; the 

 remaining 170 being divided as follows : the 

 hymenoptera 70, hemiptera 46, neuroptera 

 and amphibiotica 27, diptera 18. orthoptera 

 and thysanura S genera. 



This certainly astonishingly high number 

 of new genera for a single year must attract 

 all the more attention because all the other 

 divisions of the animal kingdom together can 

 boast only of 446 new genera during the 

 same year. — Eiitom. uachrichten, June 1S85, 

 jahrg. II, p. 191. 



WH.\T IS INVOLVED IN THE PRODUCTION OF 



A KILOGRAM OP HONEY. — Alexander Wilson, 

 of Dublin, has lately published interesting 

 details upon the amount of sugar contained in 

 the nectar of difterent flowers, and upon the 

 harvest which honey-collecting insects make. 

 He calculates that 12:; heads of clover blos- 

 soms, containing about 60 flowers in each 

 head, or 7.500 blossoms, yield about I gram of 

 sugar; the nectar from 7.500.000 flowers is 

 necessary therefore to furnish a kilogram of 

 sugar; but as out of every 100 parts of honev 

 only 75 parts are sugar, a kilogram of honey 

 exhausts in round numbers 5.600,000 flow- 

 ers ; and the bees of a hive must visit this 

 enormous number of flowers to collect a kil- 

 ogram of honey. — Di'ii/fc/ier bienenfieuiid. 

 Feb. 1685, p. 60. 



Since a colony of bees may make 30 or 40 



kilograms of honey in a season of goda^s they 

 must at this rate visit more than 2,000,000 

 flowers a day. but as a colony often contains 

 40,000 worker- and a worker bee often visits 

 50 flowers in less than half a day, this calcu- 

 lation is not unreasonable. The amount of 

 nectar in flowers varies very much with the 

 flowers, and with conditions of weather and 

 other conditions. A. J; C. 



The almost unnoticed work of domesticated 

 honey bees produces more than 15 million 

 kilograms of hone> yearly, in the United 

 States, which, at the above estimate, implies 

 an amount of labor liardly to be imagined. 



New TEXT-BOOK OF KNTOMOLOGY. — Swan. 

 Sonnenschein & Co., Paternoster square, 

 London, announce the publication of "An 

 elementarv text-book of entomologv," ^\ ith 

 87 plates by Mr. W. F. Kirby. of the British 

 museum. The publishers, in their circular. 

 W'hicli is accompanied by a specimen of the 

 first seven plates, containing So Avell-executed 

 wood-cuts of coleoptera, make the following 

 statement : " The object of the author of this 

 book has been to prepare a portable hand- 

 book, freely illustrated, in which a number 

 of the most typical and remarkable insects of 

 all parts of the world should be popularly de- 

 scribed and figured. Previous works of this 

 nature have generally treated only of a lim- 

 ited group of insects, or of British insects. 

 I'nnecessarv technicalities have been care- 

 fullv avoided, and sufficient space has there- 

 fore been gained to give a short and readable, 

 though necessarily somewhat condensed, ac- 

 count of all the more important families of 

 insects. The classificatory and illustrative 

 character of the work has been carefully 

 made its chief aim throughout." The price 

 in cloth, gilt top, is fixed at 15 shillings. 



G: D. 



LyCAENID LARVAE IN ANTS" NESTS. The 



Entomologhk lidikrift for 1S84 (p. 227) re- 

 cords that at the meeting of the Entomologi- 

 cal society of Stockholm, held I Oct. 1S84, Prof. 

 C. Aurivillius "conimunicated the discovery 



jl 



