2650 The Zoologist — Jdne, 1871. 



examination by Mr. G. S. Eoden, of the 1st Royals, lately stationed in 

 India, who had communicated to Mr. Sclater the following note on the 

 subject :— ' The tusks which I left with Mr. Bartlett belonged to a female 

 elephant, which I shot last June at a place called Muddry, at the foot of the 

 Manantowady Mountains in Malabar. Directly after shooting her I lifted 

 up her lips to see the size of the tusks, and then noticed the deposit of eggs 

 on them. I had them carefully cut out. On cleaning the tusks afterwards 

 I noticed that they had been eaten away at the ends, and also near where 

 the white eggs were. There tvere no maggots in the grooves at the end of 

 the tusks ; they were merely filled up with some dark dry clay, just the same 

 as what you now see the eggs now surrounded by. The tusks have been 

 shghtly polished over, but I took great care that the eggs should not be 

 ' touched.' Mr. Sclater remarked that a previous notice of the same pheno- 

 menon had appeared in a letter addressed to the ' Field' newspaper on the 

 lath of March last, signed by a well-known Indian sportsman, under the 

 pseudonym of 'Smoothbore': — 'Has any zoologist or microscopist ever 

 noticed how the tusks of female elephants are attacked and eaten away by 

 some parasite ? and is it not most singular that this has never been observed 

 in the tusks of the male ? ' Mr. Sclater added that he had been informed 

 by Prof. Flower that there was an exactly similar pair of tusks in the 

 liluseum of the Royal College of Surgeons, but that he had hitherto sought 

 in vain for any information as to the name of this extraordinary parasite 

 that was able to digest ivory." 



The eggs in question were each about V" in length, hence of enormous 

 bulk as compared with those of IMusca vomitoria. 



Mr. M'Lachlan was of opinion that the decay of the tusk was not directly 

 traceable to the larvse produced from these eggs, and therefore there was 

 no evidence that the insect " digested" ivory. He thought rather that the 

 parasite took advantage of an already diseased condition, and possibly fed 

 upon the morbid secretions thereby generated. Prof. Westwood thought 

 that possibly the habit was not a normal one, and that the parasites had 

 simply been attracted by the disease, in the same way that flies frequent 

 festering wounds. Dr. Sclater desired information as to what creature 

 was likely to have produced the eggs, but no Member present had before 

 heard of a similar instance. 



Mr. W. A. Lewis exhibited an earthenware jar, of Chinese manufacture, 

 about the shape of an ordinary tobacco-jar, and which was being used as 

 such by a friend some time resident in China, from whom he obtained it. 

 His friend narrated that the same description of jar was used by the 

 inhabitants of Pekin for the purpose of confining what was termed the 

 " great fighting beetle." According to him the Chinese used this beetle for 

 sporting puqioses. Each was placed in a separate jar and allowed no 

 nutriment other than water absorbed by the very thick porous bottom of 



