250 



PSYCHE. 



sketches taken in Brazil. He was a man of 

 rugged appearance who had plainly struggled 

 with physical ills, but whose face was lighted 

 by sincerity and geniality, as every American 

 who had the good fortune to meet him will 

 recall. 



Experiments with chinch bugs. — I no- 

 tice in the second paragraph of the very in- 

 teresting and important address of Professor 

 Snow published in your last, a slight inaccu- 

 racy, to which I should not think it worth 

 while to call attention if it did not seem that 

 his statement as it stands might have the 

 effect to discourage investigation of a subject 

 scarcely touched as yet, by any one. I have 

 never made any attempt to communicate 

 disease to chinch bugs in the field by artificial 

 -cultures or in any other way, and hence can- 

 not be said to have failed in this experiment. 

 My experimental work with diseases of this 

 insect has been hitherto limited to the lab- 

 oratory, where the results have been various, 

 ibut on the whole very interesting and sugges- 

 tive. Professor Snow is certainly entitled to 

 great credit for his systematic and persistent 

 experiments with the transfer of the chinch- 

 bug diseases by the method of contagion. 

 The other field is as yet practically un- 

 worked. 5. A. Forbes; 



PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB. 



ii December 1891. — The 166th meeting 

 of the club was held at 156 Brattle St. Mr. 

 S. Henshaw was chosen chairman. 



Mr. A. P. Morse recorded the capture of 

 Melanoplus minor at Sherburne and Welles- 

 ley in this State and at North Conway, 

 N. H. According to Mr. Scudder this spe- 

 cies has not been previously recorded from 

 New England. 



Mr. S. H. Scudder showed some plates he 

 had recently received from Mr. W. II. Ed- 

 wards of the larvae of Papilio zolicaon and of 

 the various stages of Oeneis uJileri. This 

 led to some discusssion of the distribution of 



the species of Oeneis and of some other 

 boreal and alpine insects. 



Mr. S. H. Scudder remarked that in con- 

 sequence of the statement in his Butterflies 

 of New England (p. 724-725) of the possi- 

 bility of the occurrence of fleshy filaments in 

 the earliest stages of the larva of A/iosia 

 ftlexippus on the second abdominal segment 

 comparable to those occurring on this seg- 

 ment in Tasitia berenice or on the eighth ab- 

 dominal segment in both species, he had made 

 a very careful examination of living specimens 

 in the first and second larval stages and found 

 that neither on the second abdominal nor on 

 the third thoracic segment (where filaments 

 occur in other genera of the subfamily) could 

 any trace of them be found. 



Mr. Scudder also called attention to a new 

 illustration of the effect of climate on the 

 development of butterflies in some experi- 

 ments made with Oeneis semidea. Out of a 

 lot of eggs laid July 20-25, an ^ widely dis- 

 tributed, the first young caterpillars moulted 

 in West Virginia on August 15; by August 

 27 two more had changed, together with one 

 in Philadelphia, and on September 5, one 

 had moulted in West Virginia for the second 

 time. In Cambridge, however, the single sur- 

 viving larva was still in the first stage on 

 Sept. 11, and the same was true at Ottawa as 

 late as Sept. 4, at about which time one passed 

 the first moult, and another early in October. 



He then exhibited some interesting new 

 species of Orthoptera lately received from 

 Mr. Blatchley, from Vigo County, Indiana. 



Some discussion followed with regard to 

 the gypsy moth (Ocneria dispar). Mr. S. 

 Henshaw stated that the larvae of this spe- 

 cies are gregarious in Europe, while in this 

 country they scatter soon after hatching. 



Mr. Scudder showed a monograph of the 

 trees which furnished the amber of the Bal- 

 tic, by Conwentz, which contained notes on 

 the diseases of these trees as caused by in- 

 sects. The work is illustrated by excellent 

 plates, and the borings of a beetle referred 

 to Anthaxia and of a fly supposed to belong 

 to Sciara are figured. 



