Entomological Society. 9370 



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- 

 bitors, 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, aud 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 Roukhampton 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 coast 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 will 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. 



"In 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 



