Entomological Society. 93879 
The Secretary observed that it might not be uninteresting to the Society to hear 
from time to time of the welfare of the various provincial Societies which had been 
founded with an object identical or cognate with our own. He had recently had the 
pleasure of assisting at the opening of an Exhibition of Objects of Natural History, 
held under the auspices of the Huddersfield Naturalists’ Society. Mammals, birds 
and their nests and eggs, reptiles, fishes, mollusks, insects, herbaria and geological 
specimens, were contributed by upwards of sixty local exhibitors, the majority of whom 
were persons gaining their livelihood by manual labour. The stuffed birds formed 
perhaps the most prominent feature. The insects consisted of eight cases of Coleop- 
tera belonging to four exhibitors, seventy cases of Lepidoptera belonging to ten exhi- 
hitors, and ten cases of miscellaneous insects belonging to seven exhibitors; nearly all 
were indigenous species ; one or two curious hermaphrodites were shown (a very com- 
plete one of Liparis dispar), and several of the cases contained singularly beautiful 
varieties of Arctia Caja, Abraxas Grossulariata, and others of the commoner Lepidop- 
tera, which varieties had for the most part been bred by the exhibitors, from the larva. 
He was informed that the exhibition had been visited by hundreds daily, and had 
proved a success both financially and otherwise. 
Mr. C. A. Wilson, Corresponding Member, under date of Adelaide, August 26, 
1864, sent the following :— , 
Notes on South-Australian Entomology. 
“The following is a statement of the comparative number of species of each order 
of insects found in the Colony of South Australia, and also of the principal families 
of Coleoptera. Additional species will be continually found in parts which are now 
for the first time becoming occupied. We are pressing forward both on the eastern 
and western sides of this continent. By public and private enterprise the country 
north of Champion Bay is now in the act of being made known. With the aid of the 
Queensland Government, that to the north of Rockhampton on the north-east coast, up 
to Rockingham, is also being colonized. Still further on the northernmost part, or Cape 
York, shooting far away towards the equator, a settlement is being formed by parties 
from England. And, lastly, by our own Government, the north-west cuast near Arnheim’s 
Land is now being surveyed for future occupation, in the, neighbourhood of the spot 
where Stuart’s small but adventurous band first saw the ocean after their passage 
through the till-then-unknown interior from Adelaide. This will still leave almost 
entirely untrodden the vast tract of country between Arnheim’s Land and the Queens- 
land territory, passing by the south shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in returning 
from which the lamented Burke and his party lost their lives; also the equally untried 
country between the boundaries of our province and that of Western Australia, the 
northern and central parts of which will probably long remain a sealed book, though 
the time doubtless wi/d come when the unknown shall be so no longer either to the 
explorer or the naturalist. 
“ What all these vast tracts will present to us of animal life, in addition to what is 
already known, it is of course impossible to say, though pleasant to speculate upon. 
Already from the neighbourhood of the Darling River, north-east of Adelaide, and 
from Western Australia, various small and quite new species of the Marsupialia are 
being forwarded to the Curator of our Museum, and new birds, reptiles and insects 
will follow. 
“Tn a rough but carefully-weighed estimate, after an acquaintance of many years 
with the insects of this colony, I have come to the following conclusions. Taking the 
