no 



winter quarters, when every other insect under the same stones was active and 

 stirrinj^, and the air so warm and bright that Larentia salicata and Crambus furca- 

 tillus were sporting in the mid-day sun above them. Such, however, was not the case, 

 and when turned out of their snug, dry quarters, they allowed themselves to be 

 handled and put into pill-boxes just as they do in winter. We may therefore ask, 

 when are these sleepers to awake ? for as the ground temperature reaches its maximum 

 during the months in which I have met with them, and Mr. WoUaston has found 

 them in a similar state in September, when a declining temperature has set in, 

 we must conclude that for that year all prospect of their subsequent issue from their 

 retreats through the influence of heat is barred. Can this be called hybernation 

 as it is usually understood? Or is there some other cause of torj)idity besides 

 mere cold? Or are we to conclude that when once put to sleep in these lofiy 

 regions they wake no more unless kindly removed into a milder clime by a stray 

 entomologist, when, as I have always noticed, they become as active as those of 

 the warm lowlands? 



" I have searched in vain for the record of similar facts in other parts of 

 Europe, where, doubtless, the same circumstances occur, and therefore T send 

 this note to the Society with the hope of calling the attention of others to the 

 subject." 



Mr. Westwood considered that these female wasps had been the founders of 

 colonies in the preceding spring, and after performing their maternal duties, had 

 retired to die in the situations in which they were found by Mr. Wailes. 



Mr. H. W. Bates communicated the following: — 



Diagnoses of three Neiv Species of Diurnal Lepidoplera belonging to the Genus 

 Agrias, and of one belonging to Siderone. 



"Wishing to dedicate one of the grandest new species of Agrias (a genus which 

 he has done so much to illustrate) to Mr. W. C. Hewitson, I send the diagnosis for 

 insertion in the ' Report of the Proceedings of the Entomological Society ' for March, 

 preparatory to the figures which Mr. Hewitson will publish in the April part of his 

 'Exolic Butterflies.' I add the diagnoses of two other new species which will be 

 figured on the same plate, as well as of a species of Siderone, intended to be figured at 

 some subsequent early date. All four species were taken by myself on the Upper 

 Amazons, and belong to the most beautiful productions of that wonderful country. 

 The discovery of the female of one of the species makes the present communication of 

 some importance in a scientific point of view ; as the non-appearance of females with 

 the usual Nymphalideous structure of the fore legs in that sex, in the genera Agrias 

 and Megistanis, seems to have excited doubts as to the constancy of that sexual cha- 

 racter throughout the whole family, especially as two forms of males have occurred in 

 some species having the usual superficial appearance of the two sexes (e. g. in Megis- 

 tanis Baeotus). But the discovery of the females in the allied genus Agrias shows 

 that the sexual character in the fore legs is precisely of the same nature here as in the 

 rest of the family Nyraphalidae. The four species now characterized will be included 

 in the 'Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley, Part Diurnal Lepidoptera,' now 

 preparing for publication. 



