SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES, 258 
Mr. Rochfort Connor, of Greenock, was elected a Fellow of the Society. 
The following gentlemen were chosen as Auditors to examine the 
Treasurer's accounts:—Mr. J. Jenner Weir and Mr. Fred. W. Dickins as 
representing the Fellows, and Mr. Thos. Christy and Mr. T. B. Forbes 
as representing the Council. 
Specimens of so-called Madrepore Marble from Towa, U.S., were shown for 
Mr. G. A. Treadwell, the abundance of Stromatopora giving the specimens 
in question a peculiar character. 
A paper was read “On new African Genera and Species of Cur- 
culionide,” by Mr. Francis P. Pascoe. The author remarked that the 
localities from which the greater part of the species described by him were 
derived are, so to say, new to scientists. They are Momboia, a missionary 
station north of Lake Nyassa; Landana, a new settlement on the Congo; 
and Mayotte, one of the Comoro Islands of Madagascar. Mr. Pascoe admits 
that entomological literature is now so extensive that possibly some of his 
own supposed new species may already be known; but the difficulty on 
his part may be more openly due to the inadequate descriptions, without 
any reference to affinities or diagnostic characters, given by some entomolo- 
yists. He is inclined to think that a precise diagnosis and considerations of 
affinity are often of more importance than the mere descriptions themselves. 
He states that there is probably no family of insects in which greater 
diversity of appearance in the same genus is to be found than in the . 
Curculionide. Species the most dissimilar are not to be separated by any 
characters which are usually deemed to be of generic value, and in extreme 
eases we have to fall back on secondary characters, which after all may be 
quite as natural. On the other hand, species which are very much alike 
in appearance are found to belong to widely different groups: while, again, 
the absence in many cases of any correlation between the characters makes 
the classification difficult, and necessitates an undesirable but unavoidable 
number of genera, if anything like definiteness is to be maintained, under 
the present conditions of insect nomenclature. Mr. Pascoe acknowledges 
his indebtedness to Mr. Simpson, of the Geographical Society, and to 
M. René Oberthur, of Rennes, for their liberality in the presentation of 
specimens from their collections. ‘The author describes in his paper some 
thirty-two new species, eleven new genera under nine subfamilies, with 
illustrations. 
An important contribution to the Natural History of the Roraima 
district, British Guiana, was read by Everard F. im Thurm, the account of 
the vegetation, however, forming the major share of the material dealt with. 
May 6.—Sir Jonn Lusezocr, Bart., F.R.S., President, in the chair. 
Prof. Henry Marshall Ward was elected a Fellow of the Society. 
The President alluded to the loss the Society had sustained in the 
