XXXll 



A letter was read from the Secretary of the Haggerstone Entomological 

 Society, inviting the Members to their annual exhibition of insects on the 

 14th and 15th inst. 



Payers read, 5fc. 

 Mr. Muller read the following, and exhibited specimens of the beetle :— 



" Notes on the Habits of Ozocjnatlius cornutns, Lee. 

 " On his visit to Europe last year, Mr. Riley, the State Entomologist of 

 Missouri, presented me with a large cynipideous, potato-shaped, poly- 

 thalamous oak-gall, from California, whicli I exhibited to this Society on 

 the Gth of November, 1871. 



" Mr. Riley proposes the name of Quercus californica for this gall, 

 which he thinks is undescribed, and specimens of which have been seen by 

 Baron von Osten-Sacken and Mr. H. F. Bassett, the leading authorities 

 on American Cynipidae. The name which the maker of the gall will there- 

 fore have to bear will be Cynips californica. 



"As the gall in question was riddled by numerous exit-holes, some 

 larger ones (two millimetres in diameter) represented those of the Cynips, 

 while several smaller round ones (one millimetre in diameter), betokened the 

 escape of an insect of a different size. I left it lying on my mantelpiece 

 until the 20th of May last, thinking that nothing further could be bred 

 from it. In this I was agreeably disappointed, as in the morning of the 

 said day a small hillock of yellowish worm-eaten dust underneath an 

 opening in course of formation warned me that the gall was still tenanted 

 by living creatures. Of course the specimen was at once consigned, to a 

 glass vessel, and thenceforward watched as often as convenient. In the 

 evening of the same day I observed that the identical hole had assumed the 

 neat circular shape of the smaller sized openings scattered over the surface 

 of the gall, and that a small, black, shining beetle had made its appearance 

 in the vessel. This Coleopteron, I have since been informed by Mr. Riley, 

 to whom I sent two pairs, was first described by Leconte in the Proc. Acad. 

 Sci. Philad. 1859, p. 87, as Anobium cornutum, and subsequently (Ibid, 

 Oct., 18G5, p. 226) admitted into his genus Ozognathus; its present name 

 is therefore Ozognathus cornutus, Lee. The author observes that " this 

 interesting species was sent me by Mr. Andrew Murray, as having been 

 hatched in great numbers from some galls sent from California." Mr. 

 Riley informs me that the habits and transformations of the species have 

 never been published, that from the identical specimen he gave me he 

 obtained several specimens of the beetle before leaving for Europe in 1871, 

 and that from another specimen of the same gall he has bred others since, 

 and has notes and figures of the adolescent stages. Acting on Mr. Riley's 

 su"f^estion, I give here the few notes I wrote down while watching the 

 beetle and its companions of both sexes, which continued to appear almost 



