The Zoologist— March, 1869. 1C07 



Mr. Butler exliibited a livinjj locust of the genus Conocephalus: it had beea 

 received by Mr. Swanzy in London on the 2i)d of February, and arrived on board a 

 ship from the West coast of Africa. A swann of them covered the decks, being at first 

 green, but after about three days they became brown, probably from the absence of 

 green food : notwithstanding exposure for some days to a very heavy sea, many speci- 

 mens clung to the vessel and arrived in the Thames alive. The one exhibited had 

 taken nothing since its arrival but a little water, except on one occasion when it was 

 compelled to clean its face of some sugar which Mr. Butler placed on it. 



Mr. F. Smith exhibited a collection of honey bees from all parts of the world, and 

 solicited the loan of foreign species, the localities of which were known, to extend his 

 knowledge of their geographical distribution and assist him in the preparation of a 

 memoir on the honey bees supplementary to that published by him some few years ago 

 in the , Annals and Magazine of Natural History ' : it was very desirable to obtain all 

 the sexes of all the species, as the workers alone did not offer sufficiently marked 

 characters to determine the ideniiiy or specific distinctness of many of the forms. 

 Among the bees exhibited there were, a queen of Apis mellifica which was with diffi- 

 culty to be distinguished from a worker; ail the sexes of Apis Ligusiica and fasciata 

 (the latter, in the opinion of Dr. Gerstauker was only a variety, but Mr. Smith thought 

 he could show its distinctuness) ; the male and worker of A. Indica, sent by Mr. Atkin- 

 son, of Calcutta ; a queen, sent by Mr. Lewis from Japan, very closely resembling the 

 common A. mellifica ; specimens of A. nigrocincta (considered by Gerslacker to be a 

 variety of A. Indica) ; all ihe sexes of A. floralis, the smallest known honey bee (the 

 worker of which is the A. lobata of Smith) ; A dorsata, the largest and commonest in 

 India and the Eastern Archipelago (of which A. testacea was only a variety) ; and all 

 the sexes of a bee from the Cape of Good Hope which might be only A. Ligustica, but 

 was considerably larger. Mr. Smith also exhibited pieces of the comb of various 

 species; the worker cells of the above-mentioned bee from the Cape were one-tenth 

 smaller than those of A. mellifica, ten of the former being equal to nine of the latter; 

 the cells of A. Indica were still smaller than those from the Cape ; the combs of A. 

 floralis, like those of A. dorsata, were attached to branches of trees; lastly, there were 

 some cells of A. dorsata, made of the same material as the rest but an inch and a half 

 in depth, which Mr. Smith supposed to be honey-cells. 



Mr. Druce exhibited a collection of butterflies from Nicaragua, brought to this 

 country by Mr. Thomas Belt. Amongst them was a new Papilio, near to P. Sesostris ; 

 and a series of Heliconiidee representing four genera, but which looked like one species, 

 the whole of them being found flying together. Ten or twelve new species had been 

 obtained by Mr. Hewitson out of Mr. Belt's collection. 



The President had obtained some handsome new species of Coleoptera, also from 

 Mr. Belt, the scene of whose operations was the neighbourhood of the Chontales 

 mines. Nicaragua was divided in the middle, the Atlantic side being forest, the 

 Pacific side savannah and open grass-land ; Chontales lay on the edge of the Atlantic 

 belt of forest, and in consequence of the development of the mines there had been 

 considerable felling of timber, and most of Mr. Bell's Coleoptera were brought to him 

 by the wood-cutters : there were some very fine forms of Stenaspis, Colobothea, 

 Amphionycha, Oncideres, Anisocerus, &c., &c., and it seemed as if the tropical types 

 culminated in size and beauty in Nicaragua. So far as American Coleoptera were 

 concerned (though he could not say that he had observed the sam*^ thing in other 



