Entomological Society. 9623 



The Kev. H. Clart mentioned that a lady residing near Buckingham Gate had 

 introduced into her garden a quantity of peat for horticultural purposes, and now found 

 thai part of the p;arden to be very much infested with wood-lice. When asked for 

 a remedy, he had suggested the application of hot water, or the importation of tnads ; 

 lie was cuiious to know whether there was any affiniiy between the peat and the wood- 

 lice? — were the latter breediufj in the peat, or feeding on it? 



Mr. W. W. Saunders was in the habit of using a great deal of peat for horticul- 

 tural purposes, but he had not noticed that it was particularly acceptable to wood-lice, 

 which moreover would not be likely to occur in the places whence the peat was 

 brought. 



Prof. Westwood remarked that wood-lice were fond of decaying wood, and the 

 taste of peat was probably not dissimilar; he did not think the creatures were intro- 

 duced with the peat, but they might he attracted to it, especially in the absence or 

 scarcity of their natural pabulum. Frogs, toads, or hedgehogs would eat up the wood- 

 lice ; bikt the best way of extirpating them was to pour boiling water upon them, 

 which might be readily done, as they were always found to congregate in the angles of 

 a frame or other construction, or just within the frame between the sides thereof, and 

 the soil or manure within. 



Mr. J. J. Weir did not find that frogs, toads, or birds kept down the wood-lice ; 

 he ha<l tried numbers of frogs and toads, but they were ineffectual. 



Mr. Stainton directed attention to a paper by Mr. B. D. Walsh " On the Insects 

 Coleopterous, Hymenopterous, and Dipterous, inhabitincr the galls of certain species of 

 Willows," published in the proceedings of the Enioinolocical Society of Philadelphia 

 for 1864. In this paper the author proposed to name and describe the galls found on 

 willows at Rock Island. Illinois, the insects which produce then), and also other insects 

 which habitually breed in the galls formed by true gall-makers, and which, as they 

 feed on the substance of the gall itself and only occasionally or incidentally destroy 

 the gall-maliing insect, may be appropriately considered as " Inquilines '' or Guest- 

 flies. Mr. Walsh enumerates five species of willow, Salix discolor, Muhl., which 

 yields three distinct galls; S. cordata, Muhi., which yields six galls ; S. longifolia, 

 MuU., which yields three; S. nigra, Marshall, which yields two galls, and S. humilis, 

 Marshall, which yields no less than ten distinct galls ; some of these galls, however, 

 occur on more than one species of willow. Besides the true galls, a Coleopterous 

 pseudo-gall was found ou Salix longifolia. Of twenty-one undoubterlly distinct galls, 

 twelve are made by Diptera (Cecidomyidae) and six by Hymenoptera (Tenihredinidae). 

 In addition to a great number of insects which occasionally inhabit these palls, there 

 are, of true inquilines, which seem to inhabit them exclusively, but without confining 

 themselves to one particular species of gall, seven Cecidomyidous species, two Tenihre- 

 dinidous species, and at least one, and probably four or five Coleoptera, besides seven 

 species of Micro-Lepidoptera. The author points out the danger of mistaking inqui- 

 lines for the true makers of the gall, and gives numerous instances iu which saw-flies 

 are inquilinous in the galls of gall-gnats, and gall-gnats inquilinous in the galls of 

 saw-flies. The same gall is often inhabited by several difi"erent species of inquilines, 

 and many species of guests habitually live in the galls of several different species of 

 hosts. Occasionally one and the same species is sometimes inquilinous in the galls of 

 other insects, and sometimes attacks natural substances in no wise connected with 

 galls. "Nothing gives us a belter idea of the prodigious exuberance of insect life 

 and of the manner in which one insect is often dependent upon another for its very 



