274 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Dr. Wallace said that on recently looking through Dr. 

 Bree's collection of British Lepidoplera he had detected a 

 Platypteryx Siciila mixed up with P. falcataria. The insect 

 did not bear any label, and Dr. Bree had not any recollection 

 of the capture of the particular specimen, though he had no 

 doubt that it had been taken by himself some years ago, 

 along with P. falcataiia, in the neighbourhood of Stowmarket. 

 If so, this was a new locality for the species, which in this 

 country had hitherto been known to occur only in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Bristol. 



Mr. Wallace remarked that Dr. Wallace's theory on the 

 relation between the size of the specimen and the period of 

 development satisfactorily accounted for the fact that as a 

 rule in Lepidoptera the male was smaller than the female. 

 Owing to the precarious tenure of life of a Lepidopterous 

 insect, which was not only exposed to the attacks of many 

 enemies, but was also liable to destruction from mere change 

 of temperature, it was important that the female should be 

 impregnated almost as soon as hatched, and therefore that 

 males should be in readiness at the time of her emergence. 

 The males which first hatched became the parents of the 

 future progeny ; the progeny inherited the qualities of the 

 parent ; and thus in process of time the males which had a 

 tendency to early hatching, the small specimens which re- 

 quired a shorter period for their development, predominated, 

 while those which hatched later, the larger males, being with- 

 out mates and therefore leaving no offspring, would con- 

 stantly tend towards extinction, and finally leave the smaller 

 males in possession of the field. 



Mr. Gould exhibited Hylurgus piniperda, which was doing 

 considerable mischief to Pinus insignis in several parks and 

 plantations in Cornwall. 



Mr. Pascoe called attention to an article on Atropos pulsa- 

 toria in Hardwicke's ' Science Gossip,' of the 1st of February, 

 1867, in which Mr. W. Chaney wrote as follows: — "My 

 first acquaintance with Atropos, or, as it is generally called 

 here, the woodlouse, commenced about thirteen or fourteen 

 years ago : at that time I lived in an old house in Brompton, 

 near Chatham, and in my bed-room, which was also my 

 library and museum, I had a very olla podrida of Natural 

 History hanging about the walls; among the rest was a 



