( S99 ) 



XX J. Some Account of an Insect of the Genus BuprestiSf taken alive 

 out of Wood composing a Desk which had been made above twentt/ 

 Y'ears. In a Letter to Alexander MacLeay, Esq. F.R.S. and 

 Sec. r,.S. bij Thomas Marsham, Esq. Treas. L.S. 



Read June 19, 1810. 



MY DEAR SIi;, 



As every circumstance that tends to the illustra- 

 tion of Natural History is particularly gratifying to you, I feel 

 pleasure in announcing to you a curious and extraordinary fact, 

 in our favourite science of Entomology, communicated to me by 

 our Right Elonourable friend Sir Joseph Banks, and which I ara 

 anxious to have laid before the Linncan Society, with a hope 

 that it may stimulate others to impart similar ami other singular 

 facts as they occur, in order that, by collecting and registering a 

 number of such communications, a new and beneficial light may 

 open into the admirable works of the omniscient Creator, and 

 the clouds of darkness that at present overshadow them may be 

 removed. 



On the 3d of January 1810, Mr. James Montague, one of the 

 Surveyors to the Corporation of London, on going to his desk 

 in the Office of Works at Guildhall, observed an insect, which 

 bad been seen by his brother in the early part of the day, en- 



3 F 2 deavouring 



