He had hoped for Dr. Chaiiman's opinion upon some of these 

 comments, but the letter containing them was too late for 

 a reply. 



Notes on the Metamorphoses of Onthophagus taurus 

 L. — Mr. Hugh Main, whose remarks were illustrated with 

 some very striking lantern slides said : — 



Fabre devoted a good deal of attention to the genus Onlho- 

 phagus and particularly to 0. taurus. When rearing this 

 species at home from specimens taken last May at La Sainte 

 Baume, in Provence, I found various divergencies from the 

 details given in the " Souvenirs Entomologiques " which it 

 might be of interest to put on record. Whether some of these 

 are entirely due to the change of climate or not requires 

 further investigation. 



Fabre gives May as the nesting month, but mine did not 

 start work till July. The insects were reared, some in flower- 

 pots, others in subterraria such as I have previously described 

 in our Proceedings. No special observations as to the forma- 

 tion of the food-masses and ovij)osition were made, but on 

 examination of a cell on July 30, the egg was seen fixed at 

 one end to the top of the hatching cavity, and projecting 

 downwards (Fig. 1). In his earlier work Fabre says the nest 

 has the food-mass occupying the base, and the cell containing 

 the egg at the top. Later he describes the " birth chamber " 

 as being at the bottom with the egg fixed on the wall, some- 

 times at the bottom of the cell and sometimes on the side, 

 standing on its hinder end and projecting into space. 



The egg when photographed was nearly ready for hatching, 

 the dark jaws of the larva being visible through the transparent 

 covering near the free end. The food- mass had been formed 

 at the bottom of a flower-pot beneath the earth and built 

 against a stone, as described by Fabre. By August 15 some 

 larvae were nearly full-grown. They showed the large hump 

 on the back which Fabre described as a " store-house of 

 cement " (Fig. 2). He says : " The larva growing plumper 

 and plumper and more and more humpbacked withdraws to 

 one end of the cell which has become a crumbling ruin. Here 

 it builds a casket in which the transformation will take place. 

 Its materials are the digestive residuum converted into 



