1866. | Entomology. 91 
silk is now being introduced largely by the French merchants 
direct from China, notwithstanding that its culture is rapidly 
advancing in France. 
Among the rich collections made by Mr. Wallace in the Malayan 
archipelago, the Buprestidz, one of the most gorgeously coloured 
families of beetles, were not the least important. Mr. Wallace’s 
set having gone to Paris, has been worked out and described by 
M. Henri Deyrolle in a beautifully illustrated volume. ‘The 
number of species in the collection amounted to 355. Some years 
ago they were considered a numerous family, “200 species being 
known.” By the way, we may mention that Australia has fur- 
nished, it is calculated, about 600 species to our cabinets, nearly all 
differing generically from those of the Malayan region. 
To the list of sects serving as food for man we must now add 
the “Kungo,” mentioned by Dr. Livingstone and his brother in 
their new work on the Zambesi. The kungo is a “minute midge” 
filling the air in countless millions, and “ looking like smoke rising 
from miles of burning grass.” ‘These flies are gathered at night by 
the natives, who boil them into cakes, “about an inch thick and as 
large as the blue bonnet of a Scotch ploughman ;” they “tasted not 
unlike cayiare, or salted locusts.” 
The Rev. G. T. Browne, who has recently published a very 
interesting work on the ice-caves of Switzerland, lately sent to Mr. 
McLachlan, who brought them before the Entomological Society, 
some insects which he had found in one of those caves. Mr. 
Browne says:—‘ There was no communication with the outer air. 
These flies were found at a very considerable depth in the earth, 
down a rock-fissure, a good hundred feet below our pomt of entrance, 
which was in itself low down in a face of rock. At the bottom of 
this we came to a chamber, one corner of which was shut up by a 
curtain of ice—hermetically sealed up. We hewed a hole through 
it—all was utterly dark—and found only ice withm. . .. The 
ice-roof of the ice-trough was thickly studded with these flies, 
standing still, but running swiftly when disturbed. I caught two, 
lying fiat on my back and lowered by a rope. The other two were 
found on my dress and beard when I was dragged up again.” 
These were caddis-flies, a species of Stenophylax (Trichoptera). 
One was a large Paniscus (Ichneumonide), apparently the only 
one found. It was suggested that the caddis-flies, or rather their 
larvee, might have worked their way up from some underground 
stream, of which there were indications, but this idea will not explain 
the presence of the ichneumon-fly. 
The new part of the Linnean Society’s Transactions contains a 
paper by Mr. Bates, on the Phasmide, a most grotesque family of 
Orthoptera, some of them twelve inches long, and imitating sticks, 
patches of lichen, and living and dead leaves. Respecting the 
