NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 97 



irresistible, force of fashion or other potent influence, may be 

 evolved a race of entomologists whose chief aim and object will 

 be the unravelment of the complicated skein of existence of living 

 species rather than the collecting and arranging of their mummi- 

 fied forms after death. A list of such students, both in the past 

 and present, includes many honoured names, of which it is only 

 necessary to mention Malpighi, whose essay on the silkworm 

 (1669) has been described as '* an almost perfect example of au 

 anatomical treatise in a new field " (Miall) ; Swammerdam, whose 

 posthumous work ' The Book of Nature ' contained the life- 

 histories of many insects, of which perhaps that of the may flies 

 (Ephemeridse), although less quoted than the more elaborate 

 dissertation on the honey bee, is the more valuable ; Lyonnet, 

 who has charmed us with his observations on the larva of the 

 goat moth {Cossiis ligniperda) ; Eeaumur, the French naturalist, 

 whose chief work, ' A History of Insects,' contains an admirable 

 account of the caddis worms (Trichoptera) ; Straus-Diirckheim, 

 whose classic exposition on the common cockchafer (Melohntha 

 vulgaris) is a masterpiece of careful research; De Geer; Durfour ; 

 Newport ; Leydig ; Newman ; Kirby ; Professor Miall, to whom 

 I am indebted for much of my knowledge of insect life ; our 

 member, Mr. S. L. Moseley, of Huddersfield, whose technical 

 work in connection with injurious insects is known to you all ; 

 and last, but certainly not least, the distinguished lady whose 

 membership is an honour to our Society, Miss Ormerod. 



(To be continued.) 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



T^NIOCAMPA GRACILIS LaYING ITS EgGS IN A PlECE OF SpONGE. Ou 



May 4th last I took a female of this species sitting iu the daytime 

 upon a frond of dead fern, and placed her in a large chip-box with a 

 small piece of sponge saturated with syrup. She lived for a fortnight 

 or more and then died, apparently without depositing any eggs, and I 

 was on the point of throwing her and the piece of sponge away when 

 something peculiar in the appearance of the latter caught my eye, and 

 upon examining it closely through a lens, I discovered a quantity of 

 eggs laid in the cells and placed some way in. They were of a pale 

 straw colour when I first saw them, and remained so until May 28th, 

 when they got a shade darker, and on June 1st I found many of the 

 larvffi had hatched. They were then of a leaden hue, with shining 

 black heads, and kept inside the sponge-cells, and I could not shake 

 them out, so I placed the bit of sponge in a jam-pot with a piece of 

 sallow and covered them up ; but the larvae would not leave the sponge, 

 and all died within the cells. I fancy they were held by the sticky 

 syrup, and were unable to get out. This was unfortunate, but a piece 

 of sponge seems to be a good thing to place in a box with moths that 



ENTOM. — MARCH, 1901. U 



