117 



Boscomb-chine, wliich he kindly added to my collection : T also possess another, taken 

 last summer near Rannoch, in Perthshire, by Mr. Foxcroft. They resort to Orchis 

 flowers ; and all that I have seen are females. 



" 2, C. nigra, De Geer. This species has also been captured in Scotland, in 

 Sutherlandshire, in June. Where Mr. Desvignes' specimen was taken Mr. Walker 

 does not slate ; it is merely indicated as an English insect.'' 



Note on Quedius dilatatus. 



Mr. Westwood said, with reference to the specimen of the beetle exhibited at the 

 last meeting, that he had received a note from Mr. Johnson (from whom, and not from 

 Professor Henslow as reported, he had received the beetle), enclosing a note from 

 !Mr. Wighton, of Cossey Hall, stating that, although he found the insect in a bee-hive, 

 it was in a nest of hornets built therein. 



The following notes by Mr. Newman were read : — 



The old Aurelians outdone. 



" At the November meeting Mr. Foxcroft exhibited some mutilated specimens of 

 Endromis versicolor — mutilated, I mean, by sundry tears and rents in their wings. 

 Every entomologist knows how these fellows wander all day long ' on amorous 

 thoughts intent.' Who has not watched them in the 'Kentish glory field' at Birch, 

 flying high over the heather, or dashing themselves incontinently against the polished 

 stems of the birches? Now I know not whether our most sagacious friend had 

 literally ' clipped the wings of Love,' but, although ' Love is (proverbially) blind,' he 

 certainly assured us that he followed these ' blind guides,' and profited by the 

 clipping, for it seems no amount of mutilation (of the wings) interferes with the 

 amorous instinct, and that these cripples continued to tumble about amongst the 

 heather and dwarf birch-trees, until they led him to female 'glories,' which he forth- 

 with impaled. Harris, Haworth and Hatchett, our guides and philosophers in 

 mothcraft, have bequeathed to us instructions how to employ maiden females as man- 

 traps to decoy the unwary and too-amorous males ; but this is the first time the male 

 has turned traitor, and lent his services to disclose the virgin's bower.'' 



Mr. Douglas remarked that once, at Wickham, Messrs. Farr, Fisher and him- 

 self took females of Lasiocampa Rubi by watching the spots where the males 

 congregated. 



A Fact hearing on the Function of Antenna. 



" It will be recollected that in an early Part of our ' Transactions ' (Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 ii. 229), there is a paper by the late Mr. Newport, 'On the Use of the Antenna; of 

 Insects,' in which that eminent physiologist contends that they are auditory organs. 

 We all admit that the subject is surrounded with difliculties, and therefore it is not 

 very astonishing that the learned author failed to convince many of his readers, 

 myself among the number: it has lately attracted attention from another point of 

 view. In tetrapterous insects the antenna; are invariably two, but in some of the 

 apterous they are four at least; in others they are altogether wanting, and it is an 



