67 



are burnt as candles, and never fail in driving the musquitos from the room. Mr. 

 Fortune added that the Artemisia, which is a species growing wild on the Chinese 

 hills, is employed to fumigate bee hives, in order to take the honey without killing the 

 bees. 



Mr. Westwood remarked that he could do almost anything with bee hives without 

 danger, by merely smoking a cigar during the operation ; indeed, he had occasionally 

 cut combs from a hive without even that protection. 



Mr. Newman read the following paper, intituled 



What is the Scutellar Depression P 



" Every day we meet with people astonished at the vastness of their own know- 

 ledge. From old ' Katterfelto, with his hair on end, at his own wonders wondering 

 for his bread,' to the modern pedagogue, whom we find in every ' twopence-a-week ' 

 day school, paralyzed by the idea 'that one little head could contain all that he 

 knew,' there seems a well-connected series of egotists, indigenous, exotic, living and 

 extinct, who are most complacent touching the subject of their own attainments. 

 This complacency (I may as well plead guilty to its possession) received a rude check 

 in my own instance when, two years ago, joining the rush of Coleopterists to that oasis 

 in the desert of British Colcopterology, Dawson's ' Geodephaga,' I perceived that here 

 and there, among the species which their reverend sponsor has so ably dififerentiated, 

 there existed a character which, in common with my beetling brothers, I had entirely 

 overlooked. This character is a most conspicuous depression at the base of the elytra, 

 a sort of wide, shallow pit, reaching almost from shoulder to shoulder, and often ex- 

 tending down the suture to full one-third of its length without any compensating ele- 

 vation of surrounding regions. At the bottom of this depression is the scutellum ; and 

 the depression, thus embracing the scutellar region, 1 have ventured to call the 'scu- 

 tellar depression.' Such, then, being the scutellar depression, the question I would 

 next ask is this, — What is its teaching.? At first I plumed myself on having disco- 

 vered a new species ; but when I found that sixteen well-marked species had each a 

 scutellar-depressed counterpart I relinquished this idea, as entailing too extensive an 

 exercise of our cherished prerogative of name-giving : I thought it would be riding 

 the pairs-of-species hobby a little too hard. Next I conjectured it might be sexual, 

 and hoped to find it a ready mode of distinguishing the lady Carabs from the gentle- 

 men ; but the examination of more individuals threw this conjecture overboard. For 

 my third guess I tried the wing difference, knowing that there were in some species 

 winged and wingless individuals ; but this failed : the depressed and elevated were 

 equally provided with wings. I submitted them seriatim to the process of gently 

 raising the elytra, and peeping beneath them ; but no secrets were concealed there, 

 and, as may be assumed, none were revealed. One ' refuge for the destitute ' still 

 remained — immaturity ; but even this would not do: the depressed individuals were 

 alternately hard and soft ; and this last guess neither elevated their spirits nor mine. 

 The phenomenon, in fact, was purely exceptional, and its occurrence governed by no 

 law that I could enunciate. The following list will show, in a tabular form, the result 

 of the examination of fifteen species, thus afflicted, in the cabinets of Dr. Power, Mr. 

 Douglas, and the Entomological Club. I have only to add that I sincerely hope that 

 Mr. Westwood may give us an explanation, at once logical, luminous and conclusive, 

 like that he has appended to my paper on heterocampous pairs of Lepidoptera. To 



