The Zoologist — August, 1869. 1807 



Mr. F. Smith exbibiled a living male of the field cricket, Acheta campestris, 

 found near Farnham ; and remarked that though he required to be placed in the sun 

 to m.ike him begin his song, moisture seemed to give him an additional stimulus and 

 made him sing the louder. 



Mr. F. Smith also exhibited specimens, some of them alive, of Pissodes notatus, 

 from Bournemouth, showing great variation in size. 



Mr. Pryer exhibited a specimen of Eupithecia togata, taken in the previous month ; 

 the occurrence of the species in this country had not been recorded for some years. 

 The locality was not stated. Mr. Dunning mentioned that he had taken the insect at 

 Brandon, Suffolk, in 1849. 



The Hon. T. De Grey exhibited three specimens of Cosmopteryx orichalcea, from 

 Wickeu Fen, Cambridgeshire ; and six of wiiat Prof. Zeller held to be a dark variety 

 of Carpocapsa Juliana, though they were (part of a larger number) bred from beech 

 in April. 



Mr. Wakefield (who was present as a Visitor) stated the result of his entomological 

 experience in New Zealand, apologising for the scantiness of his information on the 

 ground that the whole of his collections had perished in the burning of the ship 

 " Blue Jacket." As in mammals and birds, so in insects, there seemed a paucity both 

 of species and specimens, and a poverty of appearance about the few that did occur. 

 Mr. Fereday had not been able to get together more than fourteen or fifteen species of 

 butterflies, and 260 of moths. Mr. Wakefield himself had obtained perhaps 120 

 species of Coleoptera, thirty or forty of Hymenoptera, and about 150 of Diptera. There 

 was generally a close similarity to British species, but usually of an impoverished and 

 inferior type. He had taken a clear-wing moth which he believed to be absolutely 

 identical with Trochilium tipuliforme, but this species had probably been imported 

 into New Zealand with currant bushes. 



The Secretary read a letter from Mr. C. A. Wilson, Corresponding Member, dated 

 "Adelaide, 21st April, 1869." The following are extracts : — 



" Myrmfxeonid^. — We have had for some years past about seven known species 

 of Myrmeleon and the same number of Ascalaphus, with few exceptions all found near 

 Adelaide, though the greater part in each genus are very rare or scarce in individuals. 

 These have long, doubtless, been named in English Museums, but we have not the 

 names out here. All these insects are very fond of settling on the wire fences now 

 used with post and rail all over the country for fencing ; the size of the wire seeming 

 to suit the grasp of their feet as well or belter than a twig might do, and where they 

 can rest undisturbed either by adjacent twigs or the motion of the object grasped. The 

 species of Myrmeleonidae lie with all their limbs flat along the wires, looking at a 

 little distance merely like a gradual thickening and then decreasing of the metal, 

 acting with their motionless habits and grayish colour quite as a passive means of 

 defence by deception, one of the many way^ in our insect world out here, in which 

 they have " protective resemblances." Our common Ascalaphus while on the wing 

 flies like the Myrmeleons, heavily or lazily, and soon settles, but places itsdf in a 

 very different attitude,— it may be also a deceiving one: after the legs are arranged, 

 its antennae are stuck out straight before it, the knobs resting on or a little raised from 

 the wire, but the abdomen is raised pointing upwards at an angle of 45". All that I 

 have seen in this position (as many as nine in a day) seem to have been females. The 



