1814.] Imperial Institute. 457 



with the description of the first by M. Noel, and the figure of Pere 

 Plumier. It would be proper, however, to confirm this result by 

 an actual comparison of the two fish. 



M. Cuvier has likewise presented to the Class a fish little known, 

 lately caught in the Gulf of Genoa, four feet long, and shaped like 

 the blade of a cutlass, remarkable on account of an elevated crest, 

 surmounted by a kind of horn which it carries on its head, and by 

 very small ventral fins, placed below the pectoral. We possessed 

 only an incomplete description of it by the late M. Giorna, a 

 naturalist of Turin,* who gave to the genus the name of lophote> 

 and had consecrated the species to Count Lacepede, as an homage 

 due to him from all those that study ichthyology. 



M. Huber, of Geneva, son of the observer who has added so 

 many astonishing facts to the history of bees, already so surprising, 

 and author himself of a work on ants, filled with curious facts 

 respecting the instinct of these little animals, has presented to the 

 Class a memoir on the singular industry of a small caterpillar which 

 he calls ckenille a kamac (hammock caterpillar), from the way in 

 which it suspends itself to pass its state of chrysalis. It is of the 

 number of those that arc called mineuse, and it lives in the leaves 

 of some fruit-trees. In the month of August it ceases to eat, and 

 spin-; its hammock. Five hours are sufficient to construct it. Two 

 cords stretched between the edges of a leaf folded down and concave 

 above are its principal supports. It is suspended there by ligaments 

 of silk, and two other ligaments fixed to the edges of the leaf keep 

 it, as it were, at anchor. It has itself the form of a small cylin- 

 drical cocoon. M . Huber, not satisfied with following attentively, 

 and describing with care, the successive operations of the little 

 architect who constructs this complicated structure, has endeavoured 

 to ascertain how far these operations are the consequence of reason- 

 ing in the caterpillar, and may be varied by her according to cir- 

 cumstances. A caterpillar removed from the construction after it 

 has begun, begins it again as long as any silky matter remains to 

 her. If placed upon a construction begun by another, she usually 

 continues it from the point at which she finds it. But if the one to 

 which she is carried be far advanced, she prefers beginning the 

 whole anew. The butterfly from this caterpillar appears to be the 

 phaUena clerkella of Linnaeus, and one of its enemies is the 

 i< kneumon ramicornis. 



Our associate, M. de la Billardiere, has observed a curious fact 

 respecting the bumble bee, or the large bee that makes its nest in 

 the earth under turf, s-tones, &c. A\n found at the end of autumn, 

 in the nest of the species called anil sylviTiun by Kirby, an old 

 female and a working bee whose wing* had been cemented with 

 brown wax bo as to prevent them from flying; and he conceives it 

 was a precaution taken by the other bees to oblige these two indivi- 



• Menpirei '• i Academic de Turiu for IbOj — lens, j>. 19, of theMcmoirt. 



