Entomological Society. 8061 



General Index to the Second Series of the ' Transactions' 



The President also announced that the General Index to the Second or New Series 

 of the ' Transactions ' was on the table, ready for gratuitous distribution among the 

 Members and Subscribers who had paid Subscriptions for 1861. 



Exhibitions. 



Professor Westwood exhibited a box containing a number of illustrations of the 

 economy and transformations of various species of insects, which had recently been 

 presented to the Oxford Museum by Mr. S. Slone, of Brighthampton. Amongst these 

 were specimens of Volucella pellucens (together with its eggs and pupae), reared from 

 the nest of the common wasp, on the larva of which the larva of the Volucella feeds, 

 and on the outside of the nest of which the eggs are deposited. Also Anomalon Ves- 

 parum. Curt., reared from the comb of wasps' nests : some of the insects did not 

 appear till the end of three years, as stated at a previous Meeting of the Society by 

 Mr. Stone. Also specimens of various galls and their makers, or the parasites by 

 which the makers were destroyed : amongst these was a beautiful white cottony mass, 

 found on the ground-ivy, from which a small adscitory ichneumon had been pro- 

 duced ; also two Cecidomyia galls and their makers. Various illustrations of the 

 nests of insecis made in the pith of bramble and elder twigs were exhibited, with the 

 insects reared from them, including several species of sawflies, three species of Cra- 

 bronidae, one Odynerus, together with species of Malachius, Dasytes and Anaspis. 

 Two beautiful varieties of Acronycta Alni were also contained in the box — one taken 

 at sugar, recorded in the ' Entomologist's Intelligencer' for 1856, and one bred on the 

 22nd of February, 1862, the larva having fed on whitethorn and alder. 



The President said he had bred Anomalon Vesparum from Vespa rufa, but he un- 

 derstood that Mr. Stone's specimens were bred from Vespa vulgaris ; and it thus 

 appeared that the same parasite attacked two different species of wasp. 



Referring to Mr. Newman's exhibition, at the April Meeting of the Society, of a 

 pseudogynous specimen of Liparis dispar, Professor Westwood remarked that he 

 thought Mr. Newman's statement, that the antennae were those of a male, was not 

 strictly accurate ; the antennae were in fact intermediate between those of the male and 

 female. Neither was the specimen exhibited by Mr. Newman unique, for the Berlin 

 Museum possessed a pseudogynous specimen of Liparis dispar, which had been de- 

 scribed and figured some years ago by Dr. Klug, and the figure had since been repro- 

 duced in several works published in this country. 



Mr. F. Moore exhibited the cocoon of a new species of silkworm from Japan, pro- 

 bably alKed to Bombyx Paphia ; the silk was of a delicate pale green colour. 



Mr. Lubbock exhibited the preparatory state of Psocus ; the whole body of the 

 larva was covered with hairs having terminal bulbs, which retained the grains of sand 

 and other materials with which the creature came in contact, and this, coupled with its 

 greenish colour, made it very diflScult to distinguish from the trees on the bark of which 

 it lived, and thus formed a protection from destruction. So completely was the body 

 covered with these hairs that even the immediate neighbourhood of the eyes was not 

 free from them ; the consequence was that a quantity of foreign matter collected on 

 and over the eye ; and thus the singular result was attained, that an animal having very 

 complicated eyes was at the same time provided with a complicated system to prevent 

 it from seeing. 



