69 



this new inmate of the forniicanum was a biittprfh/, apparently of the family Lyca^- 

 nidce. Dr. Herricb-Schaffer bad been assured that ibis insect made no use of its 

 wings, and merely walked about in ihe ants' nebts, baving thick legs, of a peculiar 

 construction, not unlike wooden legs. 



Mr. Westwood had little doubt but the butterflies alluded to were the singular 

 insects figured by Dr. Horsfield in bis ' Lepidopterous Insects of Java,' Plate II., 

 under the generic name of Symetha (Polyoramatus Symethus of the ' Encyclopedie 

 Methodique' being the type), and having remarkably develojied and thick larsi. This 

 opinion was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Stainton. 



Mr. Douglas exhibited the following insects, and notes of their economy : — 



" Ornix Scoticella, with its pupa-case projecting from its puparium, within a leaf 

 of Sorbus aria. 



" Coccyx splendidulana, Guen., with its pupa-case projecting from its puparium, 

 in a piece of the bark of a willow, where I found it in March. Mr. Wilkinson, in his 

 'British Tortrices,' says the imago of this species 'appears among fir trees ;' but this 

 does not accord with my experience, and in the present instance there is not a fir tree 

 within half a mile of the place where I found the pupa. 



" Raphidia P Last February, when examining, in Richmond Park, the 



rotten pieces of oak branches blown down by the wind, I found, in the centre of two 

 of them, a larva of a Riiphidia. What they did there I do not know ; they appeared 

 to have nothing except the wood to eat, but they were very lively. I took them home 

 and put them in a large glass jar, still in the wood ; and there they remained till the 

 6th of May, when I found two perfect insects. Attached firmly by the outstretched 

 feet, was the pupa-skin which I now exhibit; it was in a vertical position, rerU- on the 

 back where the imago had emerged, and resembled the exuvium of a dragon-fly, such 

 as we constantly see attached to the stems of plants growing in water. The other pupa- 

 skin I could not find. Twenty-five years ago Mr. Waterhonse read a memoir on the 

 transformations of a species of Raphidia, to this Society, and it is published in the first 

 volume of the ' Transactions.' T should not have deemed it worth while to brino- the 

 subject again under your notice, only that my observation of the position of the larva 

 goes to prove his supposition that the habit is not carnivorous ; and, moreover, 

 I thought it might be of interest to show that, in the instances I noticed, the larvae 

 were not immediately beneath the bark of solid wood as his were, but in the centre of 

 rotten branches, so rotten indeed that they crumbled beneath the fingers. Possibly 

 they are not the same species as Mr. Waterhouse's. Percheron says the larvae feed 

 on larvaB of Arachnides and Ouisci ; certainly mine had no such food after I got them, 

 and as the pupa state lasts, according tu Percheron, about fifteen days, mine either 

 fasted two months or fed on the wood. 



" Trinodes hirtus. The larva I exhibited recently, at a meeting of this Society, 

 has, as I expected, produced au example of Trinodes hirtus. The following is a 

 description of the larva : — 



" Length 1-^ line. Dirty white ; head large, testaceous ; second segment narrow, 

 black ; each segment is narrowly margined with black, and down the back is a row of 

 black spots. The whole larva is densely clothed with black, stout hairs, arising in 

 fascicles ; these hairs are erect on the back, but those along the sides are rather 

 curved ; they aie shortest at the bead and anus, but the longest are more than half as 

 long as the body. The larva is without the dense anal tufts of hairs which are so 

 conspicuous in the larva of Tiicsias setra. 



