XVI JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 



tinuation and conclusion of Professor Schomburgh's account of large 

 trees in various parts of the world, especially that of a cotton tree in 

 the West Indies. The memoir contained a long and interesting 

 notice of the habits of the white ants (Termites) , which infested this 

 tree, and which, from the uncertainty which exists as to the real 

 nature of the various kinds of individuals forming their communi- 

 ties, are peculiarly worthy of the attention of entomologists going 

 abroad. 



Amongst the books presented to the Linnsean Society at these 

 meetmgs may be mentioned Palisot de Beauvois's splendid work on 

 the Insects of Africa and America : the Memoirs of the St. Peters- 

 burgh Imperial Academy, Vols. 1 and 2,, containing Mannerheim's 

 Revision of the StaphylinidcB, and a Catalogue of the Coleoptera and 

 Lepidoptera of Caucasus and its Vicinity, by M. Menetries, amount- 

 ing to about 1000 species, including various new species and a few 

 new genera : and the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for October 

 and November 1833, containing a valuable Memoir by Dutrochet 

 on the internal anatomy of the Aphides, with reference to the ques- 

 tion of their supposed hermaphroditism, and descriptions of various 

 Spanish Diptera, by M. Dufour. 



Zoological Society, February 11///. — Read the continuation of 

 a Paper, by Mr. W. S. MacLeay, u])on the genus My gale, or Bird- 

 catching- Spiders, as they have been erroneously termed, in con- 

 sequence of Madame Merian's fabulous account of their natural 

 history. The author details the habits of one species which abounded 

 in his garden in Cuba, where it resides in holes under stones, feed- 

 ing only upon mole-crickets, cockroaches, &c., and being unable to 

 spin a web; its habits are in fact essentially nocturnal. Examples 

 of this species of large size would not attack a humming-bird of the 

 smallest size, even when offered to them. From a review of the 

 writings of the early voyagers to the West Indies, Mr. MacLeay 

 supposes that the mistaken notion has originated in their state- 

 ments, that the webs of some of the spiders in those islands are of 

 so great strength that they could hold a small bird if caught in 

 them. The largest of these web- spinning spiders in Cuba is the 

 Nephila clavipes of Leach ; but so little fear have the humming- 

 birds of this species, that even the smallest species has been repeat- 

 edly observed by Mr. MacLeay in the act of examining their webs, 

 and picking the already caught flies out of them. It is well for 

 British entomologists that we have no such sagacious humming- 

 birds in our country, as some of our rarest insects have been caught 

 in spiders' webs ; amongst which may be mentioned the interesting- 

 species Stylops tennicornis of Kirby. Collectors of minute insects 



