1866. | Entomology. 407 
Several nests of the Vespa sylvestris were exhibited by Mr. F. 
Smith ; many of these were interesting from their abnormal forms, 
the workers having been deprived of their queens. A large and 
important collection of insects was also exhibited by the Rev. 0. FE 
Cambridge, made by himself in the Holy Land. This, it was 
understood, would form a portion of the materials to be used by the 
Rey. H. B. Tristram in his forthcoming work on the natural 
history of that country. In reference to a twig of a mulberry-tree 
sent from Saugor by Captain Alexander, on which were deposited a 
multitude of eggs of a species of Ascalaphus, Mr. McLachlan 
remarked on the statement made by Geoffroy that the Myrmeleon 
fornmicarius laid eggs which never produced anything ; that these 
so-called eges were the meconium, which, instead of being voided in 
a liquid shape, here took the form of egg-like bodies. A paper was 
read by Mr. Edward Saunders, entitled “A Catalogue of the 
Buprestidz collected in Siam, by the late M. Mouhot.” Le com- 
prised three new genera and thirty-three new species. 
April.—aA_ very curious arrangement of the eggs of a species of 
Chrysopa (?) from Australia was ‘brought under the notice of this 
meeting by Mr. W. Wilson Saunders ; they were arranged in a line 
on the bark of a tree, each egg supported on a stalk, the first, third, 
fifth, and so on, placed longitudinally and at right angles with the 
bark, while the intervening numbers were placed transversely at an 
angle of about 45°. Mr. Rogers sent for exhibition several indi- 
viduals of Pimpla oculatoria, which he had bred from the egg-bag 
of a spider, on which it was parasitic. Mr. J. Jenner Weir 
exhibited some larvee of the common meal-worm (Tenebrio molitor), 
which had done great damage in an extensive cellar by eating 
through the corks of bottles containing port wine, and thus allowing 
it to escape; they had also attacked the corks of ‘the sherry bottles, 
but had invariably stopped short of eating through them. It was 
supposed that these larvee had been introduced in the bran which 
had been used for packing the bottles. Mr. W. W. Saunders 
remarked that a quantity of manufactured corks in one of the 
London Docks had been destroyed by the larvae of Dermestes 
lardarius, which were brought into the docks in a cargo of skins 
infested by these insects. Mr. F. Smith exhibited a specimen of 
Bembex olivacea, taken near Gloucester ; the insect was figured as 
British by Donovan, but its claims as a British species have long 
been doubted. 
May.—Mr. W. Wilson Saunders exhibited a very remarkable 
nest—supposed to be a spider’s—from New South Wales, formed 
by bending a stout lanceolate leaf at certain definite angles into 
four portions, which, beg cemented in some way at the edges, 
presented the figure of a nearly perfect cone; the base of the leat’ 
constituted the floor, one side being left uncemented, evidently for 
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