Linnean Society. 279 
tember 1847, at Gravesend, and which he at first mistook for the 
larve of the species now named Anthophorabia. ‘hese larve after- 
wards proved to be of a species which he named provisionally Mono- 
dontomerus nitidus. ‘The general form of the larva and the armature 
of its body were then described, and the question discussed as to 
whether it was a carnivorous feeder, subsisting on the body of the 
bee larva, or a pollinivorous, subsisting on its food. The armature 
of hairs on the surface of its body showed that it was not an internal- 
feeding larva, as the author has never yet found the internal-feeding 
parasites of insects clothed with hairs. From the presence of hairs 
on its body, and from an examination of the feeces, the author was 
induced to regard it as pollinivorous. 
The larve remained unchanged until the middle of May 1848, and 
some time before passing into the state of nymphs, feeces were passed 
for the first time, similar to those of the larva of Anthophora, which, 
like its parasite, Mr. Newport has constantly found passes nothing 
until it is full-grown and ready to undergo its transformation. The 
digestive apparatus of the larva of Monodontomerus was then de- 
scribed as occupying nearly the whole interior of the body in the 
shape of an oval sac, or Florence-flask, with exceedingly thick pa- 
rietes formed of masses or packets of cells, enclosed between a deli- 
cate muscular envelope on the external and a granulated mucous 
layer on the internal surface. ‘This capacious digestive stomach is 
connected anteriorly with a short and narrow esophagus, and pos- 
teriorly with an imperforated column of masses of cells, which are 
continuous with those that form the chief portion of the walls of this 
organ. After the larva has ceased to feed, the cells separate, and 
the column becomes a tube, the separation proceeding from the 
centre of the base of the sac along the axis of the column to the 
anal outlet in the terminal segment, after which this intestinal por- 
tion of the canal is further developed and the larva undergoes its 
transformation. 
The nymph state was assumed at the end of May, and the first 
perfect insects appeared on the 27th of June, or about four weeks 
afterwards. The author concludes that the female deposits her eggs 
in the cell of the bee, after it has been closed, by perforating it with 
her ovipositor. 
Drawings of the sexes of Anthophorabdia and its larva, and of the 
larva and nymph of Monodontomerus, with details of anatomy, were 
exhibited. 
April 3.—Robert Brown, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
Read a paper ‘‘ On the Development of the Ovule in Orchis Morio, 
L.” By Arthur Henfrey, Esq., F.L.S. &c. 
The paper contains the results of a series of observations made in 
May 1848, which Mr. Henfrey presents to the Society, partly be- 
cause he believes that in the present state of the question all evidence 
derived from careful observation is of some value, and partly because 
he has succeeded in obtaining a more complete series of figures 
illustrating the successive conditions of the ovule than has yet been 
