THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 275 



scorpion, and began to pull off the legs at leisure. In India 

 it was the constant habit of rats to destroy scorpions, and he 

 believed they usually ate them ; but in the case above 

 described, the scorpion was not eaten by the rat. 



Fehruary 15, 1869. — H. W. Bates, Esq., President, in the 

 chair. 



Mr. Butler exhibited a living locust of the genus Cono- 

 cephalus : it had been received by Mr, Svvanzy in London 

 on the 2nd of February, and arrived on board a ship from the 

 west coast of Africa. A swarm of them covered the decks, 

 being at first green, but after about ihree days they became 

 brown, probably from the absence of green food : notwith- 

 standing exposure for some days to a very heavy sea, many 

 specimens clung to the vessel, and arrived in the Thames 

 alive. The one exhibited had taken nothing since its arrival 

 but a little water, except on one occasion when it was com- 

 pelled to clean its face of some sugar which Mr. Butler 

 placed on it. 



Mr. Smith exhibited a collection of honey bees from all 

 parts of the world, and solicited the loan of foreign species, 

 the localities of which were known, to extend his knowledge 

 of their geographical distribution and assist him in the pre- 

 paration of a memoir on the honey bees supplementary to 

 that published by him some few years ago in the ' Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History :' it was very desirable to 

 obtain all the sexes of all the species, as the workers alone 

 did not offer sufficiently marked characters to determine the 

 identity or specific distinctness of many of the forms. Among 

 the bees exhibited there were, a queen of Apis mellifica 

 which was with difiiculty to be distinguished from a worker ; 

 all the sexes of Apis Ligustica and fasciata (the latter, in the 

 opinion of Dr. Gerstacker, was only a variety, but Mr. Smith 

 thought he could show its distinctness) ; the male and worker 

 of A. Indica, sent by Mr. Atkinson, of Calculta ; a queen, 

 sent by Mr. Lewis from Japan, very closely resembling the 

 common A. mellifica; specimens of A. nigrocincta (con- 

 sidered by Gerstacker to be a variety of A. Indica) ; all the 

 sexes of A. floralis, the smallest known honey bee (the 

 worker of which is the A. lobata of Smith ; A. dorsata, the 

 largest and commonest in India and the Eastern Archipelago 

 (of which A. testacea was only a variety) ; and all the sexes 



