114 



Acari can resist the action of a watei-cngine they have little to fear from the effects of 

 rain." 



An Australian Bomhyx escaping from its Cocoon in England. 



" I beg to exhibit a male specimen of the Enloraeta obliqua of Walker, an 

 Australian moth, allied apparently to Zeuzera, OEceticus and Psyche: the insect 

 has recently emerged from a sack-formed cocoon, and had it escaped and been 

 captured on the wing it would doubtless have found a place in our catalogues. 

 Mr. Oxley, to whom I am indebted for the loan of the specimen, exhibited the 

 cocoon, amongst others, at one of our meetings last year, and adds the following 

 information : — ' Although I am unable to state at what date the cocoon in question 

 was collected, yet I may observe that the last cocoons of any kind that I collected in 

 Australia were obtained in March, 1854, a month equalling the September of this 

 country. The long period of fifteen mouths that this moth must have passed in the 

 pupa state I attribute to the rigours of a passage round Cape Horn and to the 

 intense cold of the last English winter.' In reference to this note, I may remark the 

 pupa state in Eriogaster, and many allied genera, is of very inconstant and uncertain 

 duration, and that the same irregularity may possibly take place in certain Australian 

 Bombyces." 



Abundance of Noctuidce, SjC, 



Extracts were read from letters to the President from Mr. T. Allis, of York, on 

 the abundance of Noctuae generally in the North of England during the past 

 summer ; and from Mr. J. Hogg, of Stockton-on-Tees, also remarking the abundance 

 of Noctuae, and the comparative rarity this autumn of the common wasp {Vespa 

 vulgaris). 



Gall-fly of the Oak. 

 The President communicated the following note on Cynips : — 



"When Mr. Haliday visited Glanville's Wootton last month, he collected some 

 galls from the oaks, which he put into a bag, and on the 22nd ult. he writes to me 

 from Dublin to say that ' On examining the bag some days since I found several 

 dozens of the Cynips out, but not one Callimome. It seems marvellous how the fly 

 can escape through so small an orifice as it leaves, and I should like to see one 

 emerge. I cannot identify it with any Linnean or Fabrician species, but it is the 

 C. lignicola* of Hartig, and the only one of that group to which the insect of the 

 ink-gall belongs which occurs so far North as England or even Northern Germany. 

 This group, distinguished by the pubescence extended to the posterior segments of the 

 abdomen, includes the largest species of the genus, and those which cause the most 

 elegant and largest galls.' This, T presume, is the Cynips I consider as the 

 C. Quercus-petioli of Linna;us." — J. Curtis. 



* " Mr. Dale's specimens have also hatched ; yet, abundant as the gall now is, he 

 had not the species before." — J. C. 



