The Zoologist — June, 1867. 797 



turned off at right angles. The Eucalypti in the neighbourhood of these insects have 

 been stripped of every particle of foliage. Great numbers of the beetles fall to the 

 ground during the flight. The noise they [make while flying is like that of a hurricane 

 playing in the rigging of a ship. The colour of these beetles is a dark bronze." 



Mr. Bates said that Anoplognathus was found amongst Eucalypti, but he thought 

 the insect referred to was more probably a grasshopper than a beetle: it was not pro- 

 bable that Coleopiera would thus migrate in swarms. 



Mr. Weir and Mr. Wallace referred to the clouds of Coccinella? which were 

 commonly observed in the hop-growing districts of Kent. 



Mr. M'Lachlan mentioned that Dr. Brauer had recently described, under the name 

 of Pharyngobolus Africanus, the earlier stages of a species of (Estridse, the larva of 

 which had been detected in the throat of the African elephant. 



Mr. F. Smith exhibited an ichneumon, Rhyssa persuasoria, placed in his hands by 

 Mr. Bond, which appeared to have worked its long ovipositor, bradawl-fashion, through 

 a piece of iir-wood, in quest of the larva of Sirex juvencus, on which it is parasitic; 

 part of the ovipositor had been left in the wood. Mr. Bond had some years ago found 

 at Bournemouth two ichneumons with their ovipositors so firmly fixed into wood that 

 he was unable to remove them. Mr. Smith had always hitherto supposed that the 

 Rhyssa inserted its ovipositor iuto the holes made by the Sirex, instead of making a 

 hole for itself in the tree : if the latter were the rule, how did the ichneumon detect the 

 presence of the larva within the wood, and know where to insert its ovipositor? 

 Mr. Edward Doubleday, however, had told him that he had seen twenty or thirty 

 specimens of the female of a Pelecinus which had perished with their elongated abdo- 

 mens inserted into the stem of a tree, whence they had been powerless to extract them ; 

 the male had a clavate abdomen, but that sex had never been met with by Mr. 

 Doubleday. 



Mr. Bates inquired whether an ovipositor was not, homologically, a modification 

 of one of the abdominal segments. 



Mr. Smith thought it was rather a modification of the aculeus. 



Mr. Wallace suggested the converse, namely, that the sting was a modified ovi- 

 positor, aDd that its use as a weapon of defence was a secondary and acquired use. 



Mr. G. S. Saunders exhibited a number of Podurida?, found near Stokesley, in 

 pools or puddles consequent upon the melting of the snow, which had recently lain on 

 the ground in the North of Yorkshire for two or three weeks. 



The President believed them to be Podura (Anura) tuberculata of Templeton, 

 though their shrivelled state rendered them difficult to identify with certainty. 



Mr. Wallace mentioned that he had received a letter from Mr. Jackson Gilbanks, 

 of Whitefield Castle, Wigton, on the subject of the distastefulness to birds of brightly 

 coloured larvoe; the writer had frequently observed the dislike, or rather the "abhor- 

 rence and dread," of pheasants, partridges, young wild ducks and tomtits for the 

 "gooseberry caterpillar:" it did not, however, clearly appear whether the writer 

 referred to the Larva of Abraxas or the grub of Nematus. 



a' 



Paper read. 

 Professor Westwood communicated a paper entitled " A Decade of New Species of 

 Mautispidae in the Oxford Museum." 



