PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 271 
that this peculiar motion of the baby Mantis is one of those cases to which 
Mr. Darwin has called attention, viz., that the relationship and affinities of 
animals are often more expressed in the embryonic than in the adult form. 
Sir Sidney Saunders exhibited a bag, said to be the production of a 
large species of spider, brought from the Fiji Islands by Mr. Henry Selfe, 
engineer on board a steamship trading between those islands and New 
Zealand. A similar specimen is said to be in the Auckland Museum. 
The natives are stated to split bamboos and to place the pieces in the form 
of a bag in the track of the spiders, and when covered by these the slips of 
bamboo are drawn out. It is believed that the natives make cloth of these 
webs. This information was obtained from another Englishman who had 
resided four years in these islands. 
The Chairman pointed out that, supposing subsequent inquiries to 
confirm these statements, this would probably be the first known case of 
an articulate animal being made to manufacture directly a fabric useful 
to man. 
The Secretary read the following note by Mr. J. W. Slater, “ On Insects 
destroyed by Flowers” :— 
“Whilst it is generally admitted that the gay coloration of flowers is 
mainly subservient to the purpose of attracting bees and other winged 
insects, whose visits play so important a part in the process of fertilization, 
it seems to me that one important fact has scarcely received due attention. 
Certain gaily-coloured, or at least conspicuous, flowers are avoided by bees, 
or if visited have an injurious and even fatal effect upon the insects. 
Among these are the dahlia, the piassion-flower, the crown-imperial, and 
especially the oleander. That the flowers of the dahlia have a narcotic 
action both upon humble-bees and hive-bees was first pointed out, I believe, 
by the Rev. L. Jenyns, in his ‘ Observations in Natural History’ (p. 262). 
He mentions that bees which visit these flowers are ‘soon seized with a sort 
of torpor,’ and often die unless speedily removed. He quotes also a writer 
in the ‘ Gardener's Chronicle,’ who pronounces the cultivation of the dahlia 
‘incompatible with the success of the bee-keeper.’ I find it also recorded 
that the passion-flower stupifies humble-bees: that bees of all kinds avoid 
the crown-imperial and the oleander, and that the honey of the latter is fatal 
to flies. I cannot call to mind that I ever saw a butterfly or a moth settled 
upon the flowers of this shrub in Hungary and Dalmatia, where it is very 
abundant. It seems not unimportant to ascertain whether the above- 
mentioned phenomena have been verified by other observers; whether any 
other insects, in such cases, undertake the functions generally exercised by 
bees, and whether other flowers have a similarly noxious or deadly action 
upon insects.” 
The Secretary also read a paper communicated by Miss E. A. Ormerod, 
entitled ‘Observations on the Effects of Low Temperature on Larve,” in 
