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giountl that the whole of his collections had perisliPfl in ihe burning of the ship 

 " Blue Jacket." As in mammals and birds, so in insects, there seemed a paucity both 

 of species and specimens, and a poverty of appearance about the few that did occur. 

 Mr. Fereday had not been able to get together more than fourteen or fifteen species of 

 butterflies, and 250 of moths. Mr. Wakefield himself had obtained perhaps 120 

 species of Coleoptera, thirty or forty of Hymenoptera, and about 150 of Diptera. There 

 was generally a close similarity to British species, but usually of an impoverished and 

 inferior type. He had taken a clear-wing moth which he believed to be absolutely 

 identical with Trochilium tipuliforme, but this species had probably been imported 

 into New Zealand with currant bushes. 



The Secretary read a letter from Mr. C. A. Wilson, Corresponding Member, dated 

 "Adelaide, 21st April, 1869." The following are extracts : — 



" MvRMFXEONiD^. — We have had for some years past about seven known species 

 of Myrmeleon and the same number of Ascalaphus, with few exceptions all found near 

 Adelaide, though the greater part in each genus are very rare or scarce in individuals. 

 These have long, doubtless, been named in English Museums, but we have not the 

 names out here. All these insects are very fond of settling on the wire fences uow 

 used with post and rail all over the country for fencing; the size of the wire seeming 

 to suit the grasp of their feet as well or better than a twig might do, and where they 

 can rest undisturbed either by adjacent twigs or the motion of the object grasped. The 

 species of Myrmeleonidae lie with all their limbs flat along the wires, looking at a 

 little distance merely like a gradual thickening and then decreasing of the metal, 

 acting with their motionless habits and grayish colour quite as a passive means of 

 defence by deception, one of the many ways in our insect world out here, in which 

 they have " protective resemblances." Our common Ascalaphus while on the wing 

 flies like the Myrmeleons, heavily or lazily, and soon settles, but places itself in a 

 very different attitude, — it may be also a deceiving one : after the legs are arranged, 

 its antennae are stuck out straight before it, the knobs resting on or a little raised from 

 the wire, but the abdomen is raised pointing upwards at an angle of 45"^. All that I 

 have seen in this position (as many as nine in a day) seem to have been females. The 

 morning is the best time to see them, as, if the wires afterwaids become hot in the 

 December sun, the Ascalaphi soon disappear; they are also quite motionless in this 

 singular position, but apparently on the watch, as they can mostly, though not always 

 be taken by a guarded motion of finger and thumb. 



" Mason Wasps. — In the month of December I took my usual annual walk to a 

 celebrated insect locality in the Mount Lofty range of hills N.E. of Adelaide, about 



six miles up a gully called Stewart's Gully 'Whiz' came by a wasp with 



purple and yellow body [specimen enclosed ; pronounced by Mr. Frederick Smith to be 

 Paragia tricolor]. It hovered over the ground for a few minutes, and then went 

 prone to earth and disappeared ; on looking about I found a little chimney made of 

 earth, down which the wasp had evidently gone: this structure was about half an inch 

 in height and one-third of an inch iu the diameter of its opening at the top, straight 

 down the sides, and placed over a hole of the same size. With slight pressure, and 

 without breaking it, I removed the chimney ; and then its use became apparent, for, 

 moved by the " gully breezes," little stones and bits of leaf came rolling down the 

 incline, and several tumbled into the unprotected hole. I watched for a few minutes, 

 but the tenant did not come out; and as I turned away, up flew another wasp of the 



D 



