Linnaan Society. 279 



tember 1847, at Gravesend, and which he at first mistook for the 

 larvae of the species now named Anthophorahia. These larvse 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 larvse remained unchanged until the middle of May 1848, and 

 some time before passing into the state of nymphs, faeces 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 raucous 

 layer on the internal surface. This capacious digestive stomach is 

 connected anteriorly with a short and narrow oesophagus, 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 Anthophorahia 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 Mario, 

 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 



