31 



olive-coloured : they appear to feed in the early morning', concealing themselves in the 

 tufts of long grass during the rest of the day, and are then only to be traced by their 

 excrement. 



Mr. Smith observed that the specimens which he found at Deal last year were 

 crawling in the warm sunshine. 



Mr. E. W. Brayley remarked, with reference to the statement made by Mr. Dutton 

 respecting the abundance of Stenopteryx hybridalis on one day and its nonoccurrence 

 on the preceding or following ones, that such facts appeared to throw great light on 

 the circumstance alluded to by Mr. Westwood, in his 'Memoirs on Fossil Insects,' 

 recently published by the Geological Society, of great masses of insects' remains being 

 occasionally found in close juxtaposition, whilst in the immediately adjoining layers 

 there were no such deposits. Another fact bearing on the same subject had been 

 stated with regard to vast quantities of dead ants which had occurred along llie shores 

 of the rivers of South America, extending for many miles : these would naturally be 

 covered with a layer of sand or other deposit, and it would be evident that the latter 

 and all future layers would be destitute of insect remains until a fresh swarm of ants 

 had been overtaken by the water, and washed up as before. 



Mr. Westwood said it was interesting to observe that facts such as those noticed 

 by Mr. Dutton, which at first sight seemed trivial, might possess considerable im- 

 portance, and even occasionally afford a satisfactory solution to a great scientific 

 question. 



Mr. Frederick Smith read the following description of a most extraordinary 

 aculeate Hymenopterous insect recently received from Australia : — 



" Lamprocolletes bipectinatus. 



" Black ; the head punctured and shining ; the face and cheeks clothed with hoary 

 pubescence, distinctly plumose under a high power of the microscope ; the mandibles 

 ferruginous at their apex ; the antennae bipectinate, the pectinations irregularly 

 toothed. Thomx shining and punctured, thinly clothed with hoary pubescence; 

 wings hyaline and iridescent, the nervures rufo-testaceous; the claw-joint ferruginous; 

 the calcarise pale testaceous. Abdomen sub-ovate, shining and finely punctured; 

 the margins of the segments constricted ; clothed above with a thin short hoary 

 pubescence. 



" Male. Length 4J lines. 



" Habitat: Australia. Taken by W. Stutchbury, between Sydney and Moreton. 



" In the collection of the British Museum." 



" This remarkable bee belongs to the family Obtusilingues, and is, in fact, an 

 Australian Colletes: the pectination of the antennte can only be regarded as a sexual 

 character, or rather distinction, of this particular species ; several analogous instances 

 occur in the fossorial genus Crabro : the present is the first which appears to have 

 been noticed amongst the Apidae." 



