120 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
and hoped that this would serve as a warning to museum naturalists, as he 
firmly believed that a vast majority of the new species now being made on 
very slender characters would prove to be casual varieties or seasonal forms 
of one and the same species. In his younger days he well remembered 
how two or three distinct forms of our common white butterflies (Pieris) 
were recognised as good, but now exploded, species, and they were possessed 
of characters far more important than those now used to distinguish species 
by certain entomologists, 
Mr. E. A Butler exhibited the egg-sacs of three species of Mantide 
from Molepolole, Bechuanaland. One species was indicated by egg-cases 
exactly resembling, though rather smaller than, those figured at Proc. Ent. 
Soc. Lond., 1883, p. xxxv, and his correspondent had sent them as without 
doubt belonging to a certain Mantis. 
Mr. W. F. Kirby, on behalf of Herr Buchecker, who was present as a 
visitor, exhibited three volumes of drawings of Hymenoptera. 
Mr. Stainton exhibited bred specimens of Chauliodus insecurellus, Sta., 
which he had received through Mons. A. Constant from Gascony. The 
larva of this insect had at last been found, not on one of the Umbellifera, 
but on one of the Santalacea, Thesium divaricatum. No doubt in this 
country the larva would be found on Thesium humifusum, a plant which, 
according to Brewer’s ‘Flora of Surrey,’ occurred on Banstead Downs. 
Unfortunately it is a somewhat inconspicuous plant, with which few 
entomologists were acquainted. It would now be their mission to learn to 
recognise this plant, known in England as “ bastard toad-flax,” and to find 
the larva of C. insecurellus upon it. 
Mr. T. R. Billups exhibited two females of Ranatra linearis, Linn., 
captured at Loughton, Essex, on January 16th last, in a locality where 
there was probably no water within a mile. 
Mr. E. P. Collett did not think the Ranatra was so rare as was generally 
supposed ; he had captured as many as sixty specimens in one day. 
Mr. Billups also exhibited a box containing Ichneumonide and 
Hemiptera, captured at Headley Lane on January 3rd, 1885. 
The Secretary read a letter from Mr. A. Lloyd, requesting the Society 
to give an opinion to assist him, as Hon. Sec. of the West Sussex Natural 
History Society, in recommending the best system of arrangement and 
nomenclature to adopt for British Lepidoptera. 
Mr. G. F. Mathew contributed the “ Life-history of three species of 
Western Pacific Rhopalocera.” Papilio Schmeltzi, H.-S., P. Godejfroyi, 
Semp., and Xois Sesara, Hew., were the species treated of. 
Mr. George Lewis contributed a memoir, “On a new genus of 
Histeride.” A very abnormal genus, previously referred to as probably 
belonging to the Synteliida@, was described under the name Nimponius, and 
four new species were described from Japan.—E, A. Fircn, Hon. See. 
| ae 
