THE KNTOMOLOGIST. 289 



full of larvae, and put them in a drawer and examine them at 

 night, the question whether this was the larva of a firefly, or 

 not, would be soon solved. 



Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London. 



March 1, ]869.— H. W. Bates, Esq., President, in the 

 chair. 



Mr. Bond exhibited specimens of Heliothis armigev from 

 the Isle of Wight, Java and Australia. The insect had been 

 taken in Java by Dr. Horsfield ; the Australian specimens 

 were captured by Dr. Madden. 



Mr. Boyd exhibited dwarfs of Vanessa Urticae, Smerinthus 

 Populi, Saturnia Carpini and Pygasra Bucephala, all bred in 

 1868, by Mr. Davis, of Wallham Cross, and scarcely more 

 than half the ordinary size of the species : this was attributed 

 to rapidity of development, owing to the heat of the summer. 



Mr. J. J. Weir exhibited a mass of larvae of Tipnla from 

 Blackheath, where acres of land were so infested that there 

 seemed to be more larvae than earth. In Greenwich Park 

 the grass was, at this early period, almost destroyed by them. 

 Rooks, starlings and sparrows appeared to be busy in the 

 neighbourhood, but no diminution in the number of the grubs 

 was observable. 



Mr. Bond mentioned that he had once known four hundred 

 of these larvae taken out of the crop of a pheasant. 



Mr. Weir read a paper " On Insects and Insectivorous 

 Birds, and especially on the Relation between the Colour and 

 the Edibility of Lepidoptera and their Larvae." 



Mr. Weir's experiments were suggested by the remarks of 

 Mr. Wallace at a previous Meeting: the conclusions at 

 which Mr. Weir arrived were, that, as a rule, hairy and 

 spinous larva? were rejected by birds (unless the cuckoo were 

 an exception) ; but he doubted whether the mechanical diffi- 

 culty of swallowing them was the cause of their rejection, 

 and rather thought that the hairs were the concomitant of a 

 disagreeable quality of which they acted as an indicator; 

 that the bright and gaily-coloured larvae were, as a rule, 

 refused ; but that smooth larvae of a greenisli or dull brown 

 colour, such as are for the most part nocturnal in their 



