168 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



from his personal knowledge that Anohium domesticum taps in the 

 manner known as the "death-watch." Xestobium tessellatum and 

 Atropos divinatoria both tap with the mandibles, and this was 

 shown by Derham to be a sexual call. 



Wed7iesday, April ith, 1917.— Dr. C. J. Gahan, M.A., D.Sc, 

 President, in the chair. — Mr. Thos. W. Kirkpatrick, The Deanery, 

 Ely, and Sir Charles Langham, Bart., were elected Fellows of the 

 Society. — Mr. G. Talbot exhibited on behalf of Mr. J. J. Joicey 

 specimens of Papilio- {Troides) priamus r. coelestis, Roths., from 

 Eossel Island and St. Aignan, and the allied race iirvilleana, Guer.. 

 from New Ireland and the Solomons. — Mr. A. Bacot exhibited 

 egg-masses of Stegomyia fasciata, the "yellow-fever mosquito." — 

 The President exhibited a live specimen of Xestobium tessellatum, 

 and demonstrated its marked power of "ticking" in response to 

 tapping on the table on which the box stood in which it was 

 contained. — The following paper was read, illustrated by the 

 epidiascope: "Revision of the Genus Tanwus," by G. T. Bethune- 

 Baker, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



OBITUARY. 

 William H. Baker. 



In the death, during the middle of May, 1917, of Mr. W. H. Baker 

 a veritable link with the past has been severed. He succeeded to the 

 paternal farm at Battisford, near Stowmarket, and died in his ninety- 

 third year. His father was as keen a working Lepidopterist as 

 himself, and had lived to be eighty-four ; in fact, the 13,000 British 

 moths, of which their united collection consisted, are said to represent 

 the labours of no less than 150 years. As was to be expected in a 

 country village, Mr. Baker knew his insects, their habits, habitats, and 

 familiar names very thoroughly, though nothing of their nomenclature. 

 Among the few insects of other Orders in his collection were the 

 locally very rare Ranatra linearis, L. (first recorded from Sufi'olk by 

 Donovan) and Mesosa nubila, 01. (which Harwood rediscovered in 

 Assington Thicks here during May, 1915). When last I visited 

 Mr. Baker, shortly before his retirement to the adjacent village of 

 Combs, he delighted me with tales of the Rev. Joseph Greene, 

 of Playford— though that concerning the silver trowel was new to 

 him ; Dr. C. R. Bree, of Stowmarket ; of the Rev. Harpur Crewe, who 

 often visited the latter ; Prof. Henslow, of Hitcham ; and even of the 

 last years of the Yen. William Kirby, F.R.S., of Barham, who died in 

 1850. Many of Mr. Greene's notes on the " Lepidoptera occurring 

 in the County of Suffolk," printed in the ' Naturalist,' 1858, e.g. p. 230, 

 were made upon Baker's material, though he himself, I believe, wrote 

 nothing, and his father only the note on a social wasp at p. 189 of the 

 same periodical. C M. 



