160 Mr. J. O. Westwood’,? Observations on the 
may account for the birth of the caterpillar of a minute and deli- 
cate moth, within the stone of a peach or a cherry. 
Offering, therefore, this solution as to the discovery of grubs in 
the heart of any large fruit, I may now notice the circumstance, 
that the Bruchus granarius is stated to deposit an egg on every 
pea in a pod, which the grub, when hatched, destroys ; this again 
appears to me to be an assumption unsupported by direct obser- 
vation, or reconcileable with what occurs in other instances ; — that 
more than one grub may be found in a pod of peas is unquestion- 
able, but it appears to me to be much more probable that they 
should have been produced from eggs deposited by separate beetles, 
or that, if deposited by a single insect, they should have been de- 
posited in one spot, rather than the female should have bored 
through the pod at regular distances, according to the situation of 
the grains. 
Some of the species of flags, Iris pseudacorus and fcetidissima, 
the seeds of which are contained in a large pod, are attacked by 
the Mononychus pseudacori, a small weevil ; and in some of the 
pods which I collected in the Isle of Wight, several larvse were 
found, which did not quit the pod to descend to the ground in 
order to undergo their transformations, but arrived at the perfect 
state within the pod, — thus affording an exception to Reaumur’s 
statement, that these fruit insects quit the fruit to pass their trans- 
formations under ground. 
I have mentioned these various particulars, because they were 
essential to our endeavours to learn the natural history of the in- 
sect exhibited at the last meeting. 
The nut or shell in which this insect was inclosed was exceed- 
ingly hard, and it was not without the greatest difficulty that I was 
able to split it open with a penknife. It was If inch in length ; 
the shell was about 1-1 Gth of an inch in thickness, and near the 
extremity, at the upper end, was a hole about l-4th of an inch in 
diameter, through which the antenna of the inclosed beetle was 
protruded ; near this hole, on the opposite side of the shell, was 
another small hole about 1-1 0th of an inch in diameter, and through 
these holes a small piece of string had been passed. Repre- 
sentations of the nut in different positions are given in Plate 
XIV. Figs. 11, 12, 13, and 14. On inquiry, I learn from Pro- 
fessor Don, and several other botanists of eminence, that this 
shell is one of the seeds of Achras Sapota, or some allied species, 
a large fleshy fruit growing in South America, having from 
six to twelve of these nuts in the centre. This plant is the 
common Sapota or Sapodilla plum-tree or bully-tree. It is one 
