220 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



The King and the Entomological Society of London. — At 

 the last meeting of the Entomological Society of London it was 

 announced that H.M. the King had been pleased to become a patron 

 of the Society. This is the first occasion when the Sovereign has 

 demonstrated officially his interest in our branch of science and the 

 work associated with it, and we offer, therefore, our brother entomo- 

 logists hearty congratulations upon the honour conferred on them. 

 For those of us who have been present when His Majesty has been 

 the guest of the Royal Society know very well that his interest in 

 matters scientific is something more than formal. But many years 

 have elapsed since a meeting of the Society was honoured by the 

 presence of Royalty. The first (and last) royal names signed in the 

 Fellows' Obligation Book are those of the Princess Victoria (after- 

 wards Queen-Empress), and of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, who 

 were present soon after the foundation of the Society in 1833. 



Crane-flies and Sweets. — In a lane here on May 23rd I was 

 much struck by the unwonted attitude of a female Tipula peliostigma, 

 which was sitting on a dog- wood leaf in the hedge with her body 

 closely adpressed. This appeared so unusual in the insects of the 

 present genus, which seem to invariably stand high upon the tips of 

 their elongate legs, that I looked more closely, and found that she 

 was greedily sucking the honeydew which had fallen from a batch 

 of the Aphidid, Drepanosiphum acerina, Walk., on a superimposed 

 maple shoot. I have never met with Tipulse on honeydew before, 

 and consider the incident remarkable ; but that the genus is fond of 

 sweets is, I believe, a well-known fact. Tipula marmorata and 

 T. confusa were both taken on overnight "sugar" in a north-east 

 wind on the afternoon of September 23rd, 1898, in Bentley Woods, 

 near Ipswich (along with several Limnobia bifasciata, Schr., which 

 had occurred in the same situation on both the 13th of the same 

 month and August 10th, 1895) ; and I find in my diary a note under 

 September 9th, 1907, that on that day a female Tipula oleracea was 

 observed by me " distinctly sucking the sweets from the stylopods of 

 Angelica sylvestris by the River Waveney " at Beccles, in Suffolk. — 

 Claude Morley ; Monks Soham House, Suffolk. 



Indian Ichneumon Synonymy. — It may be well to put on record 

 the synonymy of the fourteen species inadequately described by 

 Peter Cameron in 1897 (Mancher Phil. Soc. Memoirs, 1897, no. 4, 

 pp. 3 et seqq.), of which I have examined all the types : — (1) I. agra- 

 e?isis, male, = Isclmojoppa luteator, Fab. Ent. Syst. Suppl. 1798, 

 p. 222. (2) I. appropinquans, female, = Myermo rufipies, Cam. Ann. 

 Nat. Hist. vii. 1901, p. 524, female. (3) I. buddha, female, = 

 Ichneumon buddha, Cam. (closely allied to I. extensorius, Linn.). 

 (4) I. clotho, female, = Lareiga alboannulata, Cam. Zeits. Hym.-Dip. 

 1905, p. 246, female. (5) i". confusanms, female, = Phaeogenes con- 

 fusayieus, Cam. (hardly distinct from P. impiger, Wesm.). (6) I. hypo- 

 crita = cratocryptus (Thorns. = finchra, Cam. Zeits. Hym.-Dip. vii. 

 1907, p. 463) hypocrita, Cam. (7) I. inquietus = Oiorhinus inquietus, 



