Dec. 1, 1881] 
NATURE 
109 
We give, through the courtesy of the publishers, 
another illustration taken from the chapter on Weevils. 
It is of a weevil known as Rhyncophorus palmarum. Its 
fat grubs live on the stems of palm-trees, and are often 
Wan 
i 
I 
very destructive. Several of the species are very injurious 
to the sugar-cane. One found in sugar-plantations in 
Guiana contain in their intestines lumps of a sweet waxy 
substance—the altered saccharine food on which they 
The Palm Wecvil. 
live—and for this they are boiled and eaten by the 
natives. The fine fat larva and the pupal cc nditicn, 
The account of the immense and important order of 
the Hymenoptera is written by Mr. Dallas; but only the 
as well as the full-grown weevil, are to be seen in the history of the Aculeata is here given, and the other 
engraving. 
sections are reserved until the succeeding volume. 
a 
AMI BOUE 
= decade which closes this year will remain a 
memorable one in the annals of geology for the great 
names which appear in its obituary. Not a few of the 
early leaders, to whom it was possible to master fully every 
department of the infant science and to strike out into 
new untrodden paths in almost any direction, have lived 
on to witness the vast development of the studies which 
they did so much to foster. In this country we have lost 
only lately Murchison, Sedgwick, Lyell, Phillips, Scrope, 
| whom we early learnt to reverence as demi-godsof the heroic 
| 
age. And now to these names another falls to be added 
which, though not that of a Briton, has long been a 
household word among the geologists of this country. 
The veteran Ami Boué has just passed away. Ripe in 
years and universally honoured, he has remained perched 
on his beloved mountain slopes like a boulder stranded 
above the reach of the all-devouring sea. But the tide 
of mortality has at last swept him away, and has thus 
broken one of the most interesting ties that bound us to 
the early days of geology. Having for many years enjoyed 
