PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 83 



neath a string course in the masonry, about 40 ft. from the ground and 10 ft. 

 below the battlements. He at first supposed it to be a curiously coloured 

 swallow's uest, but on looking more carefully he perceived that it was the 

 commencement of a honeycomb, in course of construction by the bees of 

 an adjoining crevice. The comb eventually consisted of four slabs, hung 

 parallel with the face of the wall, measuring each of them about 2 ft. by 2i ft. 

 The larger part of the combs was blown down during the gale of October 

 14th, when many of the cells were found to be tenanted by bee-grubs ; but 

 the bases of the combs remained in situ, and on November 2nd were not 

 deserted by the bees. The fragments exhibited were picked up from the 

 ground under the nest on the 26th ult., after the bees had forsaken them 

 and the grubs had departed. 



The President remarked that he knew no other instance on record of 

 the hive-bee building in the open air. 



Mr. Eaton also exhibited specimens and coloured figures of new varieties 

 of Armadillium vulgare, L., and Porcellio scaber, Latr., together with a 

 typical example of the latter species from Iceland. 



Dr. H. C. Lang exhibited a specimen of Lycccna Icarus, Rott. (Alexis, 

 W. V.), var. Icarinus, Scriba, in which the basal spots on the under side of 

 the fore wings are absent. Dr. Lang thought it would be difficult to 

 distinguish the female of this variety from L. Medon, Esp. 



Mr. J. Jenner Weir remarked that he possessed specimens of this 

 variety, but he believed it to be of very rare occurrence in Britain. 



Mr. W. L. Distant exhibited a specimen of an uudescribed species of 

 Cicada from Borneo. 



Mr. T. R. Billups exhibited a female specimen of Dufourea vulgaris, 

 Schk., captured on a bloom of ragwort on the banks of the Basingstoke Canal 

 at Woking, August 1st, 1881. This was the first female taken in Britain. 



Sir Sidney S. Saunders said he captured a male near Chewton, Hamp- 

 shire, in August, 1879. He believed this genus was rare on the Continent, 

 as Lepeletier de St. Fargeau had never met with specimens himself, but 

 described a male and female from Latreille's collection. 



Sir Siduey S. Saunders exhibited a species of Scleroderma received from 

 an entomologist of Lyons, and specimens of two dipterous insects, Oscinis 

 frontella, Fall., and Drosophila fenestrarum , Fall. ; the former reared 

 from wild figs forwarded by Mr. Frank Calvert, of the Dardanelles ; the 

 latter from Egyptian sycamore figs. In both instances the parent flies 

 appeared to have entered these figs after the Cynipidm (reared therein on the 

 seed-germs) had escaped through a large aperture which they make by 

 gnawing around the crown until this falls in. The slender white worm- 

 like larvae of the Oscinis were wriggling about amid the pulp of the fig, 

 together with many of the fragments of the former occupants, chiefly males 

 which never quit the fig; and a large number of the Oscinis pupse — some 



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