FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 287 



Dormillon (Corallus cookii) and Mr. Broadway had also sent i 

 with it its young ones numbering between twenty-five and thirty, 

 which had since been put into spirits. The young ones it would 

 be found differed so much in their markings that scarcely two of 

 them were alike. These snakes were not venomous but were 

 very fierce and struck very readily, and doubtless Father Labat 

 was misinformed when he was told the snake he saw was a 

 viper, and very probably it belonged to this species. But the 

 curious fact about all this was this : Mr. Arthur Carr of Caparo 

 recently caught a large female Mapepire Balsayn (Bothrops 

 atrox) one of our most deadly snakes. The captive was in an 

 interesting condition and shortly afterwards brought forth fifty- 

 seven young ones, all of which were marked exactly like each 

 other and presented no differences at all except in size and 

 shade. These snakes he begged to exhibit in Mr. Arthur Carr's 

 name and members would see for themselves how all the harm- 

 less snakes differed from each other in spots and stripes and colour, 

 «fec, while the venomous ones were all uniformly alike, the exact 

 reverse of the statement by Father Labat. He further drew 

 attention to a water snake, probably llelicops angtdatus, found 

 near the Toll Gate, which, although a harmless species, bore an 

 extraordinary resemblance to Lachesis muta, a resemblance which 

 none but a very close observer could detect. 



The Secretary produced a beetle (Family : Lamellicornia ; 

 Group : Orycidea) from Montserrat, which was sent by Mr. 

 John Guilbert. The President said that it looked very much 

 like the coconut beetles which had done such damage in 

 Singapore and which had necessitated an Ordinance being 

 passed to check their ravages. Mr. Urich remarked that, so far 

 as he knew, Mr. Guilbert's beetle was not very numerous and not 

 injurious, as the larvse was supposed to live in decaying wood. — 

 Mr. Potter laid on the table a piece of a cocoa tree which was 

 attacked by a Borer which Mr. Blandford had determined as a 

 probable new species allied to Xyleborus capucinus. 



Mr. Potter also showed a caterpillar found on a papau tree 

 which Mr. Caracciolo said would produce a species of Heliconia. 

 Mr. Urich exhibited two species of MutilUe from Arima, also a 

 rather dark specimen of the snake Leptodira anmdata. Mr. Urich 

 said that through the kindness of Professor Brauer he was able 

 to give the determination of a very large brown fly, found at St. 

 Ann's by Mr. Potter, which was supposed to be the imago of a 

 mosquito worm, but whose larvte, according to the Professor, 

 lived in rotten wood, possibly devouring the larvie of longi- 

 corn beetles and other wood-boring insects. The fly's name was 

 given as Acanthomera championi, Osten Sacken (Biol Cent 

 americana.) " It showed a broader face than Osten Sacken's 

 " type. Perhaps it might turn out to be a new species, as Osten 



