THE ZooLocist—OcToBeERr, 1876. 5131 
bug of the house martin, of which he had taken eighteen specimens on the 
window-sills of a house. 
Mr. Weir mentioned that, on a recent visit to the South Downs, he had 
suffered much annoyance from the attacks of the harvest-bug, as many as 
- eighty pustules appearing on each foot. Several remedies were suggested, 
especially rubbing the affected parts with brandy and water; but Mr. Smith 
stated that on one occasion when he was in the Isle of Wight, and exposed 
to their attacks, he had found that by taking a dose of milk of sulphur he 
was effectually relieved from all annoyance. 
Professor Westwood communicated a note with reference to some shoots 
of horse-chestnut which he had exhibited at the July meeting of the Society, 
as having been destroyed, apparently by some Lepidopterous larve or wood- 
boring beetles; but he had since received from Mr. Stainton some shoots 
that had been forwarded to him by Sir Thomas Moncrieffe, which had been 
destroyed by squirrels in precisely the same manner. Sir Thomas had 
himself seen the squirrels at work splitting the shoots with their teeth and 
extracting the pith. 
Mr. Smith remarked that he had found the common bufftip moth 
(Pygara bucephala) very destructive of late to the Spanish chestnut, a tree 
on which the insect is not usually found. 
Professor Westwood also stated that he had received from a correspondent 
in Oxfordshire specimens of the two small species of grasshopper with long 
antennze, Meconema varium, F’ab., and Xiphidion clypeatum, Panzer, which 
he had taken on a pear tree in his garden, where they had been regularly 
observed for the last five or six years. 
Mr. M‘Lachlan stated that the former insect was frequently observed by 
Lepidopterists when sugaring for moths. 
Mr. Smith communicated the descriptions of. three additional species of 
Formicide from New Zealand, which had been sent to him by Mr. David 
Sharp since his description of Mr. Wakefield’s collection was in the press. 
Two of the species belonged to genera not previously ascertained to inhabit 
New Zealand, namely Amblyopone and Ponera. 
Mr. F. Smith exhibited a series of sixty specimens of a sawfly (Cresus 
septentrionalis), which he had bred from larve found feeding on young 
shoots of the alder, growing on the banks of the Sid, near Sidmouth, South 
Devon. The specimens of the fly were all bred in a single flower-pot, nine 
inches in diameter. 
Mr. Smith also mentioned the fact of Mutilla Kuropza haying been found 
parasitic on Bombus muscorum, by Miss M. Pasley, in an orchard at Shed- 
field Grange, near Wickham, Hants; he also remarked on a coincidence 
somewhat remarkable, that on the day previous to his receiving Miss Pasley’s 
communication, Prof. Edward Brandt, of St. Petersburg, had informed him 
that he had found Mutilla Europea in a nest of Bombus muscorum; this 
