( xeix ) 



It was probably formed about the 10th. This residue of the 

 puddle was a wriggling mass of tadpoles and small fish ! 

 How did the eggs get there ? ! " 



[Dr. Gr. A. Boulenger, F.R.S., kindly writes: "I have 

 often heard before of water-holes in Africa being filled after 

 months of drought and then at once alive with fish, which 

 must have been aestivating in the ground, probably at a 

 considerable depth, where there was just enough moisture to 

 keep them alive. The tadpoles are easily accounted for, as 

 frogs breed at once after rain, their eggs hatch in a couple 

 of days, and the success of their brood depends only on how 

 long water, or at least moisture, will remain to allow the 

 young to complete their metamorphosis."] 



" On Dec. 30th I got two Asilids with prey, one a winged 

 cJ black ant, the other a typically aposematic black and 

 scarlet Hemipteron (I think a Reduviid). It was alive and 

 unfortunately escaped. That it was not dead seems to be 

 another instance of the well-known hardihood and retention 

 of life of aposematic insects in general. I feel sure Asilids 

 must inject some poison into their prey when they first thrust 

 the proboscis in, for I have watched one catch an insect and 

 immediately caught them both and found the prey (even a 

 vigorous insect, a Cicindelid, for instance) as collapsed as if 

 it had been stung by a Fossor. [Kirby and Spence (5th ed., 

 1828, vol. i, }>. 274) speak of the instantaneous death of the 

 prey : the injection of poison is suggested in Trans. Ent. 

 Soc, 19C6, p. 365, footnote.] On this same date I got a 

 small black and yellow predatory wasp [the Fossor (Spliegidae) 

 Palarus latifrons, Kohl, allied to Astata and Crabio] carrying 

 a stung honey-bee [Apis mellifica, L., var. adansoni, Latr.] — 

 heavier than itself. I send both." 



The observations on Ammophila beninensis, Pal. de Beauv. 

 {lugubris, Gerst., see p. cxxxvi), made on Jan. 3, are published 

 in Proc. Ent. Soc, l'.HT. |». xlii. 



" On Jan. \th I saw, about 7.30 a.m., large numbers of 

 winged Termites belonging to a very minute species [Enter Dies 

 sp.] emerging from holes in the ground, on a cleared track. As 

 fast as they came out they huddled together, each one's head 

 beneath the folded wings of the one in front, so that all one 



