the surface of the gvounci, ever re-x;nteiccl a tree, and he expected that these underwent 

 their transformations in the earth. 



Mr. Janson, on behalf of Mr. A. G. Latham, exhibited two specimens of the nest 

 or cocoon of a sociable larva from Port Natal: a large outer cocoon, three or four 

 inches in diameter, was made up of numerous coats of brown silky matter, the whole 

 forming a covering of considerable toughness, attached to and transpierced by a small 

 branch of a tree: on culting this open it was found to contain a number of smaller 

 cocoons, each of which was tenanted by a pupa. It seemed as if a score larvae 

 associated themselves together to construct and build themselves into the outer family 

 cocoon, upon the completion of which each larva proceeded to spin its own indi- 

 vidual cocoon. 



Mr. Trimen had found the same iind of cocoon in Natal : it was that of Anaphe 

 reticulata (Walker, Brit. Mus. Cat. Lep. Het. part iv. p. 856), one of the family 

 Liparidse. 



Mr. Janson, on behalf of Mr. Latham, also exhibited half-a-dozen larva-cases or 

 cocoons of another Lepidopterous insect, probably a Psyche, or allied thereto. These, 

 too, were from Natal, and were attached to and hung pendulous from the branch of a 

 'tree, resembling a cluster of large beech-nuts. 



Mr. Trimen said that these cases were common in Natal on the Mimosa, or thorny 

 acacia ; he had collected many of them, but had never been able to breed a single moth 

 of either sex. 



Mr. Pascoe exhibited a beetle from New Zealand (probably from Otago), which he 

 regarded as the type of a new genus of Cucujidae, and which he proposed to describe 

 under the name of Dryocora Howittii. He remarked that members of some of the 

 clavicorn families were well known to have tarsi with varying numbers of joints; or, 

 when the normal number were present, the basal joint was very small or almost 

 obsolete, as in many Cucujidse, or the penultimate was very small or almost obsolete, 

 as m the Nilidulida?. In Cucujus the tarsi were heteroraerous in the male and 

 pentamerous in the female ; but in Dryocora, which in other respects was allied to 

 Cucujus, the tarsi were tetramerous in both sexes, the basal joint being suppressed. 

 Organic modifications of this kind, and the exaggerations of form of some one organ 

 which in certain groups was found to be subject to unusual modification, — as the 

 antenna) in Paussidce, the eyes of Hippopsinae, the pronota of Membracidae, &c,, — 

 seemed to Mr. Pascoe " to point to a law of aberration only to be explained on the 

 hypothesis of the derivative origin of species." 



The President mentioned that Mr. Darwin was engaged in elaborating the subject 

 of secondary sexual differences and sexual selection, and would be obliged by the 

 communication of detailed observations on the numerical proportion of the sexes of 

 insects in nature. He had numerous cases of well-authenticated numerical excess of 

 the male over the female, and was desirous to ascertain whether in other cases a 

 coiTesponding excess of the female over the male had been noticed. 



Mr. M'Lachlan mentioned Apatania muliebris, of which he had captured hundreds, 

 but the male had never been seen ; and Boreus hiemalis, of which only three or four 

 males had been known lo occur in this country. Mr. Janson mentioned Tomicus 

 villosus, the female of which was almost a plague, whilst the male was hardly known. 

 Mr. F. Smith cited Tenthredo cingulatus, the male of which was rare, whilst the 

 female abounded, and Hemichroa alni, of which the male was quite unknown. Of 



