35 



the following year a very minute ichneumon made its appearance by a hole it had 

 made at the opposite end." Reaumur could not ascertain the fly that should legiti- 

 mately come from the cocoon, for different cocoons gave different flics: whence it 

 was evident that these ichneumons were infested by their own parasite. This might 

 have been the case with the cocoon mentioned by the lady. 



Mr. Westwood said, that though in tins account the chrysalis was stated to be 

 attached to the leaf, yet it was evidently an enclosed pupa, for its case is immediately 

 afterwards mentioned. Since the last meeting he was satisfied the larvae in the seeds 

 were Lepidopterous, and thinking it possible that only those seeds moved that contained 

 a larva infested by an ichneumon, he had inquired of Sir William Hooker if there were 

 any exceptions, among the afl"ected seeds, in the power of jumping, but was informed 

 all gave equally strong leaps. 



Mr. Curtis said that at the last meeting he had observed "he expected the seeds 

 contained the larva of a Bruchus," and in confirmation of Reaumur, and of the possi- 

 bility of an insect confined in a hard case having the power to give it motion, he 

 had stated that "he had a compact horny oval cocoon formed by an ichneumon, 

 which bounded about on a table like an India-rubber ball, shortly before the fly 

 batched." In order to identify the fact with the insect, he had searched for and found 

 the specimen which had been disregarded for twenty years, and he now had the satis- 

 faction of exhibiting the insect with its cocoon, and the label attached to it when the 

 fly hatched. It was a Campoplex allied to C. majalis, Grav., and probably described 

 by that author ; but the species of this genus being very difiicult to identify, he would 

 not venture to characterise or name it. These Ichneumonidae are parasititic on the 

 Tortricidae and smaller moths, and also on the Curculionidsp. 



Mr. Lubbock said it would not be diflicult to demonstrate, according to the laws 

 of matter and motion, that the muscular power of an insect in the situation referred to, 

 if exerted in a particular manner, would cause a jumping motion in its envelope. 



A neiv British Cynips and the Galls made thereby. 



Mr. Rich, present as a visitor, exhibited some sprays ol oak thickly covered with 

 bunches of large galls. In Somersetshire generally, and in part of Gloucestershire, 

 they were so abundant that the oaks were covered with them, to the extinction of the 

 acorns, the loss of which, for feeding their pigs, the farmers greatly regretted, 

 although he believed that in the value of these galls they had more than an equiva- 

 lent, for their chemical qualities were nearly equal to those of the imported galls of 

 commerce. 



Mr. Curtis said, Mr. Rich recently gave him an example of this gall, and he had 

 since received some of the galls with a specimen of the fly from his friend W. H. L. 

 Walcotl, Esq., who obtained these galls from an oak growing near the Hotwells, 

 Clifton. Having paid great attention to the Cynipidae,* and bred most of those 

 which are produced from oak trees, he had often been doubtful regarding the true 

 Cynips Quercus-petioli of Linnasus, but he was convinced the specimen he now 



* Vide vols. i. ii. iii. iv. and v. of the ' Gardener's Chronicle,' for the economy 

 and figures of Cynii)s aptera, C. umbraculus, C. Quercus-tiarie, C. lenticularis,. C. 

 Quercus-peduuculi, C. Quercus-ramuli, C. Quercas-castaneae, and C. Quercus-folii. 



