NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 77 



At a representative gathering of subscribers on January 3rd, 

 ways and means were discussed, and it was found that the funds 

 ah-eady amounted to sufficient to entertain fully the usual 

 number of guests ; and, in fact, a hundred and twenty could be 

 seated. It was admitted that further subscriptions would come 

 in when the movement became more widely known ; those present 

 were Kev. F. D. Morice (Chair), Collin, Waterhouse, Champion, 

 Sich, Col. Yerbury, Gibbs, Kowland-Brown, Jones, Prof. Image, 

 Morley, Rev. G. Wheeler, Adkin, Dr. Jordan and Turner. 

 Neither a suggestion for forming a new social society for the 

 perpetuation of the function, nor another for the extension of 

 the Club limits, met with any support. It might be pointed out 

 that special care should in future be taken to invite foreign 

 and colonial entomologists temporarily residing in England. 

 We failed to see either Maxwell Lefroy or N. B. Kinnear 

 among the nearly one hundred who assembled on the 16th 

 to drink standing and in silence to the memory of Mr. G. H. 

 Verrall. 



The acting Government Entomologist, Mr. C. French, gave 

 us an interesting account and plate of the " Parasitic Wasp," 

 Megalyra fasciipennis, in the December number of the ' Journal 

 of Agriculture of Victoria,' pp. 818-9. He says they prey upon 

 Longicorn Beetles and Buprestids, and the figured cross-section 

 of damaged timber shows how destructive these insects are. 

 Megalyra is not a true Ichneumonid, and the genus is now con- 

 sidered as a distinct family, well represented in the British 

 Museum by three or four of the few known kinds from Queens- 

 land, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. Mr. W. W. 

 Froggatt has well monographed this small family in the Trans. 

 Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales for 1906. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Hespeeia melotis, Dup. (Hypoleucos, Led.). — Being at the 

 moment engaged in an attempt to arrange the Western Palaearctic 

 Hesperiids, I have on many occasions availed myself of the exhaus- 

 tive accounts of the British species of this difficult group given in 

 the late J. W. Tutt's ' Natural History of British Butterflies.' To 

 the short article announcing Dr. Reverdin's discoveries relative to 

 H. inalvcB and H. malvoides, I added {antea, p. 7) that he had come 

 to the conclusion that H. melotis, Dup., and H. hypoleucos, Led., 

 were one and the same true species— a conclusion which I should 

 have had no doubt whatever about accepting, had not Tutt described 

 them separately (Op. cit. vol. i. pp. 229-230) as varieties of malvce. 

 The notice of melotis ends : "It occurs in May in the Tyrol and in 

 Switzerland," and the author proceeds: " We are inclined to refer to 

 Duponchel's variety {sic) only those dark examples from the eastern 



