HOLMBSDALB NATURAL HISTORY CLUB. i 



Mr. T. Cooper exhibited a Polyporus found growing on the root 

 of a currant-tree, the pileus of the fungus being covered with a 

 beautiful green growth, believed to be Nostoc communis, one of the 

 Algae. This growth had also extended to portions of the soil 

 attached to the currant root. 



Evening Meeting, Dec. \Qth, 1875. The President exhibited a 

 series of Hymenopterous insects consisting of Sand Wasps(Fossores) 

 and of Social and Solitary Vespidae (Diploptera), all European, and 

 gave some account of their habits and economy. He also exhibited 

 the nests of Polistes Gallicus, Eumenes unguicula, Pelopaeus spirifex, 

 and the briar cells of Raphiglossa Eumenoides and Psiliglossa 

 Odyneroides ; the first mentioned belonging to the Social, and the 

 others to the Solitary Vespidae. The nest of Polistes consisted of a 

 kind of paper, usually formed by the constructor of vegetable fibres, 

 but in one instance which he mentioned, play bills of different colors 

 which had been placarded were made available for the purpose, as 

 shown by the macerated layers of the respective colors, of which the 

 cells were composed. He also mentioned the remarkable circum- 

 stance of one of these nests having been removed with a single 

 occupant to a remote and secluded locality outside a window of his 

 own room at Corfu, but within the exterior blinds in a treble row with 

 many others, from whence the solitary Polistes, left there in pos- 

 session, went back to communicate with her form.er companions, and 

 show them the way to their nest ; returning with two others to feed 

 the larvae. He explained that these coadjutors must necessarily 

 have belonged to the original brood, as all others would have had 

 their own larvae to attend to, and are never tolerated in strange 

 domiciles by the rightful owners. He mentioned this circumstance 

 as serving to show that means of communicating their ideas to one 

 another are available to these social communities, although confuted 

 in other instances by some of Sir John Lubbock's interesting 

 experiments on Antp,Wasps, and Bees. He argued that the purport 

 of such communication would be made known to the disconsolate 

 searchers for their lost abode, by the hilarity and energetic action 

 of the new comer, which must have well reconnoitred the concealed 

 locality in the first instance, and then by a series of intelligent 

 demonstrations induced some of her former companions to accom- 

 pany her back to such an unusual and improbable site, as effectually 

 as if voice and language had been employed for this purpose. He 

 then gave an account of the domesticated habits of the Pelopaeus 

 spirifex, which constructs its mud nests in houses and in occupied 

 rooms, notwithstanding the frequent obstacle to all access thereto 

 by closed windows. The nest which he exhibited had been 

 constructed in his own room, and he mentioned various experiments 



