60 Mr. W. W. Saunders on the Habits 



thus solved, the spines are thus evidently intended to enable the insect to convey 

 the materials with which she closes her burrow, which a smooth surface could not 

 accomplish. The apex of the intermediate and anterior tibise on one side have also 

 some portion of this substance, the greater part of which may perhaps have been 

 rubbed off in its capture, or I took her before she had quite completed her task. It is 

 but in very few of these insects that the anterior tibiae are spinose and restricted to 

 such as are absolutely fossorial in the strictest application of the term, and not ex- 

 tended to the non-parasites which burrow in wood. That the anterior and interme- 

 diate tibiae, as well as the plantae of the latter, are occasionally employed to convey 

 building materials, I have a very strong proof in a specimen of Bombus terrestris 

 in my possession, which has all these limbs thickly covered with clay, and the pos- 

 terior corbiculae loaded to a degree which must have been a great encumbrance even 

 to so robust an insect ; and which 1 think tends to prove that it went some distance 

 to fetch it, or that its use was very urgent, otherwise, with its well known rapidity on 

 the wing, it would have accomplished several journeys in nearly the same space of 

 time as from the impediment offered to its flight by being so loaded it executed this 

 single one. I have also this year taken a female Psithyrus which has some clay on the 

 superior surfoce of the apex of the posterior tibiae and plantae, which perhaps indi- 

 cates that although supposed to be strictly parasitic, it yet takes some share in the 

 domestic ceconomy of the nest, and which supposition is strengthened by the cir- 

 cumstance that it is most certainly not an accidental adhesion, nor is it so in either of 

 the cases cited above. We thus see that Nature never works without a purpose, — 

 she is too strict an oeconomist of time and material, — and we may therefore rationally 

 infer that where an organ exists, a function necessarily coexists, althougli too re- 

 condite for our ready apprehension, and which analogy or chance may ultimately 

 discover. 



XIII. Oil the Habits of some Indian Insects. By W. W. 

 Saunders, Esq., F.L.S., S)C. 



[Read April 7, 1834.] 



In the hope that the following remarks on the habits of a few In- 

 dian insects may not be thought uninteresting to entomologists, I 

 am induced to submit this communication to the Entomological So- 

 ciety. The facts are chiefly taken from a note-book in which I re- 

 corded the observations as they occurred. 



I captured many specimens of the Lamia Ruhus, Fab., in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Calcutta on the Pipal tree {Ficus religiosa) during the 

 months of May and June. These insects cling very tightly to the 

 branches, so much so that it is difficult to detach them, except by 

 violent shaking. "When on the wing, they fly w-ell in a direct line, and 

 their great size gives them somewhat the appearance of small birds. 

 Their food consists of the round buds of the Pipal, and not the leaves 



