The Zoologist— April, 1868. 1 181 



ground to change and formed for itself an earthen cocoon. There was no evidence 

 at the larva, of the goat-moth, which were not unfrequently found crawling ab uTon 

 h urface of the ground, ever re-entered a tree, and he expected that these ude we" 

 their transformations in the earth. uuunweni 



Mr. Janson, on behalf of Mr. A. G. Latham, exhibited two specimens of the nest 

 or cocoon of a socable larva from Port Natal , a large outer cocoon, three or four 

 nches ,n diameter, was made up of numerous coats of brown silky ma te the wlfo e 

 forming a eovenng of considerate toughness, attached to and transpierced byalman 

 branch of a tree; on cutting this open it was found to contain a number of smaHe 

 cocoons each of which was tenanted by a pupa. It seemed as if a eo.Tr J 

 a socated themselves together to construct and build themselves into the outer fm,y 

 cocoon, o npo : the completion of which each larva proceeded to spin its owu^ 



Mr. Trimen had found the same kind of cocoon in Natal : it was that of An,nl„> 

 reticulata (Walker, Brit. Mus. Cat. Lep. Het. part iv. p. «*' Z^l^ 



Mr. Janson, on behalf of Mr. Latham, also exhibited half-a-dozen larva-cases or 

 cocoons o another Lepidopterous insect, probably a Psyche, or allied thereto. T Le 

 too were from Natal, and were attached to and hung pendulous from the branch of a 

 tree, resembl.ng a cluster of large beech-nuts. 



Mr. Trimen said that these cases were common in Natal on the Mimosa, or thorny 



of eith;, h s e ex lected many of tbem ' but had never beeu able » ^ * «»«!• »"2 



re^ZZT^T " ^ ^ ^ Zea,and (pr ° bab 'y flom 0ta S°)> »°ich be 

 regarded as the type of a new genus of Cucujida, and which he proposed to describe 



under the name of Dryocora Howittii. He remarked that members of s me o he 



cla icorn fam.hes were well known to have tarsi with varying numbers of joint or 



when the normal number were present, the basal joint was very small or almost' 



as the' NrTrJ T'r' "^ '^'^ ™ "* ™ M » ■"»<* obTe" 

 as n the N, uduhd*. In Cucujus the tarsi were heteromerous in the male and 



pentamerous m the female; but in Dryocora, which in other respects was all ed o 



Cucujus, the tarsi were tetramerous in both sexes, the basal joint being suppressed 



Organic mediations of this kind, and the exaggerations of form of some one " i g a „ 



«h.ch in certain groups was found to be subject to unusual modification,-^ the 



antenna, ir . Paussid*, the eyes of Hippopsins, the pronota of MembracidL, &c._ 



vole °s f'tf T e " ^ P ° iDt t0 a kW ° f abemti0D 0Dl ^ t0 be explained on he 

 hypothesis, of the derivative origin of species." 



The President mentioned that Mr. Darwin was engaged in elaborating the subject 

 of secondary sexual differences and sexual selection, and would be obliged by the 

 communication of detailed observations on the numerical proportion of the sexes of 

 insects ,n nature. He had numerous cases of well-authenticated numerical excess of 

 the male over the female, and was desirous to ascertain whether in other cases a 

 corresponding excess of the female over the male had been noticed. 



Mr. M'Lachlan mentioned Apatania muliebris, of which he had 'captured hundreds 

 but the male had never been seen ; and Boreus hiemalis, of which only three or four 

 males had been known to occur in this country. Mr. Janson mentioned Tomicus 

 villosus, the female of which was almost a plague, whilst the male was hardly known 



