JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
xlv 
a peculiar gurgling sound, is very active, and cleans itself with its 
beak, or rostrum, or nose, or bill, or whatever it is, and also with 
its hind legs. 
“ I have detected four species of Fossores, with apterous females 
in copula ; and have also another species I am almost certain of.” 
Extracts were also read from a letter, dated 26th March, 1837, 
addressed to the Secretary, by \V illiam Spence, Esq. F.R.S., Hon. 
M.E.S., containing further observations upon the economy of 
Scolytus destructor, accompanied by separate copies for distribu- 
tion amongst the members, of an article upon the Diseases to 
which the Elm is subject. Mr. Spence thus proceeds : — 
“ My objects in sending these papers to the Society are, to put 
the members in possession of the details of the mode adopted at 
Brussels for the treatment of elms suspected of being attacked by 
Scolyti, and also to direct the attention of such of them as may 
have an opportunity of making observations on the subject, to a 
point in M. Audouin's important discovery, which seems to me to 
want a fuller elucidation than it has yet received, and which I will 
proceed briefly to explain. 
“ When M. Audouin mentioned to me last spring, during the 
short and hurried interview I had with him, the outline of his dis- 
covery, I understood him to say that it is the male Scolyti only, 
that by eating the bark of sound trees bring on in them that state 
of partial decay which afterwards fits them for being selected by 
the females for the deposition of their eggs. In a long and interest- 
ing letter, however, with which he favoured me in reply to one I 
addressed to him asking for his consent to his discovery being 
announced in Mr. Loudon’s work, he informs me that I mistook 
his meaning on this head, and that he considers the females equally 
with the males to attack sound trees for food: and as his autho- 
rity, resting on the long and close attention he has paid to the 
■subject, is of such great weight, I have in the Arboretum Britan- 
nicum , p. 5, stated the fact to be so. I confess, however, I have 
considerable doubts on this point, and am strongly inclined to 
believe that my original impression, that the males alone attack 
sound trees, is well founded, as it does not seem to me likely that 
when the females in forming their egg-galleries are gnawing with 
their mandibles a substance which must be so similar in its taste 
to that on which the males feed, they should refrain from swallow- 
ing at least so much of what they detach as will satisfy their hunger ; 
and that they should quit their operations there for the sake of 
