PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 393 
indeed, I saw very daring acts done. I venture to suggest to your readers 
that a subscription to help these men should be made, and I shall be very 
happy to receive for them any money which may be forwarded to me for 
the purpose. Many of these fishermen have enabled me to bring to the 
notice of naturalists some of the rarer fishes and Crustacea found off the 
coast of Cornwall. So far as I can ascertain, the total loss sustained by 
the men is about £30.—Tuomas Cornisa (Penzance). 
PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
ENToOMOLOGICcAL Soctrty or Lonpon. 
August 7, 1878.—H. W. Batzs, Esq., F.L.S., F.Z.S., President, in the 
chair. 
A communication was read from Mr. M‘Lachlan, to the effect that, in 
the writer's opinion, the larva referred to by Prof. Westwood, at the last 
meeting of the Society, as boring in the stems of the potato, was in all 
probability that of a Noctua, Gortyna flavayo, polyphagous in the stems of 
a variety of herbaceous plants—foxgloves, thistles, burdock, é&c. 
Mr. S. Stevens exhibited some living specimens of Teretrius picipes, found 
on oak palings at Upper Norwood—parasitic on Lyctus oblongus—running 
in and out of the burrows during the hot sunshine; also specimens of 
Pachnobia alpina, male and female, bred by Mr. Clark, who found 
the pupe under Vaccinium on the highest parts of the mountains above 
Rannoch, N.B. 
Mr. Enock exhibited some remarkable varieties of British Lepidoptera, 
recently described and figured elsewhere. ; 
Mr. Rutherford stated that he had been successful in rearing certain 
larve associated with the cocoons of a moth allied to Anaphe panda, 
exhibited at a previous meeting. They proved to be those of an ichneumon 
ascertained by Mr. F. Smith to be Cryptus formosus, Brullé, parasitical 
also on Anaphe reticulata. A number of specimens of the insect, both 
preserved and alive, were exhibited. 
Mr. Rutherford also exhibited a series of colour-varieties of an African 
butterfly, viz. Aterica Meleagris, Cram., as illustrative of the principle of 
protective assimilation. He remarked that all the species belonging to the 
genus Aterica were shade-living and extremely local in their habits, with the 
solitary exception of Meleagris, which he had never found in shady places, 
but always in bright sunshine. He had never observed it settle on leaves, 
but always on the ground, and with closed wings, the under side of which 
have such a resemblance to the colour of the soil that he had always 
experienced the greatest difficulty in detecting the butterfly when at rest. 
aE 
