XIV 



Mr. Stainton read a letter he had received from the Kev. P. H. Newnham, 

 of Stonehouse, Devon, stathig that he had taken two living specimens 

 of Deiopeia pulchella, on the opposite side of the river Tamar, in Cornwall. 

 Mr. Stainton remarked on the unusual circumstance of the insect having 

 been captured at such an early season as the month of May. 



Mr. Charles 0. Waterhouse sent for exhibition a living specimen of a 

 Mantid {Emjnisa pauperata), in the larva or pupa state, brought from 

 Hyeres by the Rev. Mr. Sandes, of Wandsworth. The captor stated that 

 he had supplied it with flies, &.C., in the hope of ascertaining the mode in 

 which it seized them, but that he could not induce it to eat anything while 

 he was looking on. Mr. Stainton suggested that if he had put a living 

 spider in the cage it would probably have seized it immediately. 



The Secretary read the following note, which he had received from 

 Mr. William D. Gooch, of Spring Vale, Little Umhlanga, Natal, respecting 

 the habits of the Longicorn " coffee-borer of Natal : " — 



" The egg, as far as we can determine, is laid about the level of the soil, 

 about the middle of December, at a time when the trees look most healthy, 

 are making most wood, and the circulation of the sap is most free, it being 

 also during the damp part of the year. I have, however, despite considerable 

 investigation, been unable to get specimens of the egg, and so watch the 

 development of the larva from the earliest stages. 



" Specimens of the larva have already been laid before the members of 

 your Society, but I forward by this post also some specimens. 



" In only three cases, about January or December, have I met with any 

 insect in the bark, between the level of the ground and the roots, at all 

 corresponding to the larger insect found in the wood. On examining those 

 trees with larvae in, with hardly any exception, we discover the bark eaten 

 away, or rather, I should say, wanting about the level of the ground ; from 

 this place to the entrance-hole of the borer in the forks of the roots there is 

 always to be observed a more or less irregular channel or road cut in the 

 bark leading from one to the other, and in this channel I discovered two of 

 the three small specimens of larvae mentioned above. The entrance-hole of 

 the larva is very irregularly placed; sometimes it begins as an excavation 

 along one of the roots at a fork in the rootlets ; sometimes it enters im- 

 mediately under the first root, hardly below the ground. I have not noticed 

 the entrance of the larva above ground, except in two instances, when there 

 was a hole below the lowest primary in one case and tlie second primary in 

 the other. I did not, however, satisfactorily determine whether these were the 

 same insect, or even if so, they might not be considered as accidental cases. 

 The excavation of the wood of the tree by the larvae need not be entered into, 

 as every one must be well aware of their powerful mandibles and their un- 

 limited appetites. How long the insect remains in the larva form I have 

 not yet been able to judge; but in consequence of finding always two and 



