82 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
wine, recommended by Mr. Laddiman on the faith of the 
‘Taxidermist’s Manual, and actually procured a gross of 
small phials of very clear glass, intending to keep one larva 
in each; but long before the one hundred and forty-fourth 
phial was loaded, those at the beginning of the series had 
become as black as ink, which seemed so objectionable that 
I abandoned the attempt, and threw away the specimens. I 
have since received skins filled with fine dry sand, which 
continued to escape; I suppose through the aperture by 
which it was introduced. The drawers in which such pre- 
served larvae were deposited presented the appearance of 
being infested with mites, and constantly evoked the excla- 
mation :— I see you have mites here; you must look after 
them in time!” The coloured wax I have never tried.— 
Edward Newman. | 
Notes on the Yucca Borer (Megathymus Yucce, Walk.). 
By Cuas. V. Ritey, M.A.; Ph. D.* 
[THE Castnians have always been a favourite group with 
me, and I have felt a disposition to place them with those 
familiar Lepidoptera, of which Xyleutes Cossus is an expres- 
sive example, and which we all seem to recognise by the 
name of “internal feeders.” It is a group marvellously hete- 
rogeneous in its adult state, and marvellously homogeneous 
in the larval state. I recollect well the cachinnation I pro- 
voked, when in 1832 I proposed they should be associated: 
it was thought a climax of absurdity to place Xyleutes Cossus 
and Aigenia Tipuliformis in the same category. Mr. Riley’s 
most interesting paper gives me some confidence that the 
idea is not so far-fetched; and I hope hereafter, if I should 
live, to include other and unlooked-for Xylophagans, even 
among the Micro-Lepidoptera. But I will quote Mr. Riley. 
—Edward Newman.} 
The study of aberrant forms in Nature is always inte- 
resting. They are continually confronting the naturalist. 
They baffle the systematist, and constantly remind him of 
the necessarily arbitrary nature of his classificatory divisions. 
Few divisions seem more natural, at first glance, than that of 
* From a Paper read before the Academy of Science of St. Louis, U.S.: 
communicated by the Author. 
