Octobiir— December iSSj/ 



PSYCHE. 



351 



ENTOMOLOGICAL ITEMS. 



Apical application of apis. '-Sir John 

 Lubbock says bees are not sympathetic. It 

 may be stated, accoi'dingly. that the warmth 

 of their reception doesn't come from the 

 heart." 



Prize work on tactile organs. The 

 French academy, on 21 Dec. 1SS5, granted the 

 grand prize for anatomical and physiological 

 research to Dr. Joannes Chatin, for his work 

 (not yet published) on the tactile organs of 

 insects and Crustacea. 



Tenacity of life in Calliphora vomito- 

 RIA. — At the meeting of the Societe entomolo- 

 gique de France, 8 July 1SS5, as reported in its 

 Bulletin, Mr. Paul Audolent remarked that he 

 had lately had an opportunity of proving the 

 vital power of larvae of Calliphora vomi'/on'a. 

 Many of these larvae, which he had given as 

 food to tritons, remained alive two days at 

 the bottom of the water, and in fact pupated 

 there. He had collected these pupae to see 

 if they would reach the perfect state. 



Birds nesting in hornets' nests. — In 

 a letter to Nature, 12 March 1SS5, v. 31, p. 

 43S, on birds nesting in ants' nests, Mr. W. 

 Davison says of Halcyon cliloris, a species of 

 kingfisher, which also nests in ants' nests: 



At Mergui, in South Tenasserim, I found 

 a nest of H. chloris in a hornets' nest, and 

 although I saw the birds repeatedly enter the 

 hole they had made in the hornets' nest the 

 hornets did not seem to mind it, but they re- 

 sented in a very decided manner my attempt 

 to interfere with the nest. 



Life of Dr. Dzierzon. — Dr. Oskar Kran- 

 cher contributes to the Deutscher biciicn- 

 frennd for January 1S85, an account of the 

 life of Dr. Johann Dzierzon, well-known for 

 his contributions both to the theory of bee- 

 life and to practical apiculture. Dr. Dzier- 

 zon, or as he was commonly designated, 

 Pastor Dzierzon, was born 16 Jan. iSii, in 

 Lowkowitz. near Kreuzburg, Upper Silesia. 

 Shortly after finishing his studies at Breslau, 



he became, in 1S35, pastor in Karlsmarkt, 

 near Brieg, in Silesia, where he remained 

 until lately, having just returned to live in 

 the town where he was born. 



Strlicture of eyes of diptera. Pro- 

 fessor C. V. Ciaccio, of Bologna, published 

 in the last volume (ser. 4, v. 6, fasc. i) of the 

 "Memorie della R. accademia dell' Istituto 

 di Bologna" a series of excellent illustrations 

 of the minute structure of the eye of diptera. 

 The paper, published under the title of "Fig- 

 ure dichiarative della minuta fabbrica degli 

 occhi de' ditteri," consists of twelve large 

 plates with explanatory text (2S pages), and 

 gives microscopical details (enlargement from 

 190 to 410) of eyes of kippoboscidae, oestridae, 

 svrphidae, mitscidae, cmpidae. leptidae, asil- 

 idae, bombylidae, iabanidae, ckiroiiontidae^ 

 tipitlidac and pulicidae. — Rntom. iiackrich- 

 tcn, May i885,jahrg. 11, p. 144. 



.Structure and habits of Oedem.ato" 

 PHAGA aegusalis. E : Meyrick (Trans. En- 

 tom. soc. Lond., 1884, p. 73-74) makes a new 

 genus, Ocdematopkaga, for Pyralis aegusalis 

 Walk. , "correcting" the specific name aegalis. 

 O. «e^HS(//M is a curious insect, having as one 

 of its generic characters "Anterior femora in 

 male with an expansible tuft of hairs," a char- 

 acter recalling a peculiarity of certain species 

 of Catocala. The larvae feed gregariously "in 

 large, very irregularly spherical, rough galls, 

 three or four inches in diameter, on the 

 branches of a phyllodineous Acaeia," . . ."the 

 larva eats galleries through the substance of 

 the galls, ejecting a good deal of the excre- 

 ment from holes in the surface. 



Dipterous parasite of the rhino- 

 ceros. — Dr. Friedrich Brauer describes and 

 figures in the Verhandlungen der zoolog.- 

 botanischen gesellschaft in Wien (1884, v. 

 34, p. 269-271, pi. 10) the larva of a new 

 genus and species of oestridae from the 

 stomach of Rhinoceros sumatrensis. The 

 larva differs strikingly from that of Gastro- 

 philus in having the arcades of the posterior 

 stigmata forming on each side three bands. 



