October — December iSS^.' 



PSYCHE. 



337 



and North America. This was followed by 

 a s{en>2ral discussion of fossil insects. 



S May 1S85. — The iiith meeting was held 

 at 19 Brattle St., Cambridge, 8 May 1SS5, 

 the president, Mr. S : H. Scudder, in tlie 

 chair. 



Mr. S : H. Scudder read some extracts 

 concerning mosquitoes and their abundance, 

 from notes which he had made in i860 while 

 travelling about Lake Winnipeg and upon 

 the Saskatchewan River. Some discussion 

 followed, upon mosquitoes and other dipte- 

 rous pests of similar habits. 



Mr. S: H. Scudder announced the death of 

 Dr. Hendrik Weyenbergh, well known as a 

 naturalist and entomological writer from Hol- 

 land, who had chosen the Argentine Republic 

 as a field of labor. He died while upon a 

 visit to his native country. 



Dr. G : Dinimock explained a method 

 which he had devised for advantageously 

 utilizing sale-catalogs of books in prepar- 

 ing subject bibliographies, thereby saving 

 much writing. 



12 June 1885. — The 112th meeting was 

 held at 19 Brattle St., Cambridge, 12 June 

 1SS5, the president, Mr. .S : \\. Scudder, in 

 the chair. 



Jlr. R. Hayward read a paper upon the dis- 

 tribution of insects in the White Mountains 

 of New Hampshire, in which he called at- 

 tention to the existence of four tolerably dis 

 tinct faunae in these mountains. The first- 

 which he called alpine, is restricted to the 

 summits of the higher mountains; the sec- 

 ond, which he termed sub-alpine, is confined 

 to the neighborhood of the timber-line; the 

 third occupies the greater part of the country 

 below, and is the ordinary fauna of northern 

 New England: while the fourth is confined 

 to the immediate vicinity of the larger river- 

 bottoms, and is essentially identical with 

 that of eastern Massachusetts. Mr. Hay- 

 ward's paper led to considerable discussion. 



Dr. G: Dimmock described the life-history 

 of Sfhaeriilaria bombi, a nematod which is 

 parasitic in humble-bees {Bombits), as it 

 has been elucidated by Dufour, Lubbock, 



Schneider, and Leuckart. Specimens of 5. 

 bombi were shown; these were taken 10 

 June 18S5, in Cambridge, Mass., by Dr. 

 Dinnnock, who believed this to be the first 

 record of their occurrence in America. [See 

 Aiin-r. licit., Jan. 1S86, v. 20, p. 73-75.] A 

 brief discussion upon Sfh<ieiiilaiia, and 

 upon other subjects, followed. 



9 Oct. 1885. — The 113th meeting was held 

 at 6t Sacramento St., Cambridge, 9 Oct. 

 1885, the president, Mr. S; H. Scudder, in 

 the chair. 



Mr. E. F. Ladd, of the N. V. Experimental 

 station at Geneva, N. Y. , communicated, 

 through Mr. B; P. Mann, some observations 

 made by him in the fall of 1SS4, on the life- 

 habits of Gelechia cerealclla, which was 

 foimd to have completely infested the collec- 

 tion of corn in the museum of the station. 

 Hundreds of moths emerged daily, and it be- 

 came necessary to burn much of the collec- 

 tion while the remainder was packed in boxes 

 and treated to bisulphide of carbon [GS2]. 

 An examination seems to show that the 

 larvae feed only upon the deposit of starchy 

 matter in the kernel. Larvae were not found 

 in the varieties of sweet corn, in which the 

 starch is distributed throughout the kernel, 

 but they were found, frequently two and oc- 

 casionally three in a kernel, in the flint corn, 

 in which the starch is deposited in a mass. 

 In pairing, the moths remained together 

 75 minutes. One moth laid thirty-six eggs, 

 in two patches of 17 and 19, which hatched 

 in seven days, from 2 to 9 November. The 

 eggs were at first milky white, showing an 

 orange tint at the end of twenty-four hours, 

 and gradually becoming deep orange at the 

 end of thirty-six hours. They were laid, on 

 the bottom of a dish, in threes, touching at 

 the ends. 



Dr. G : Dimmock described the method 

 adopted by him in rearing coccincllidae, and 

 gave a brief account of the life-history and 

 habits of these insects. 



Dr. G : Dimmock noted the excessive abun- 

 dance of a species of aphididac on a few 

 maples on North Avenue in Cambridge. So 



