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water to the most distant part of tbe vessel, bring it to the surface, disengage it from 

 the fork, and let it fall gently to the bottom. In a very few seconds the prawn becomes 

 aware of the operation ; he knows that food is or has been iu his vicinity ; he stands 

 erect on his legs; he lashes the water with his antennae, and, rising from the make- 

 believe rock whereon he was previously resting, hovers in mid-water, still waving his 

 hair-like antenns until one of them has bisected the line of transit of his food: this 

 line ascertained he follows it without hesitation ; ascends to the surface ; plunges to 

 the bottom ; seizes the meat with his claws and conveys it to his mouth: during the 

 entire operation, seldom prolonged beyond a minute, the motion of all the antennae is 

 constant and indescribably beautiful ; and it would require a far keener eye, a far 

 more vivid imagination than mine, to detect or to suppose an auditory faculty exercised 

 by some of them and an olfactory one by others. A second and even a third prawn 

 will sometimes follow the trail after the first has passed, and I have seen three at once 

 in active pursuit, like fox-hounds running with the scent breast-high. It is difficult 

 iu such a case as this to escape the conviction that the antennae ascertain the course 

 to be taken : to see the creature would remove the doubts of the most sceptical on this 

 point; at first all the antennae are porrected, but when the trail is once struck, and the 

 pace of the hunter consequently improved, pair after pair bend back, with the rapidity 

 of the motion. It is equally difiicult to imagine that the passage of the meat through 

 the water has left a sound : savour or odour are probable, sound certainly improbable. 

 Thus as, in the first instance, we are willing to believe that the antennae guide the 

 creature to its food, so, in the second place, we are willing to conclude that the senses 

 of touch and smell are those most likely to be called into action by a substance totally 

 incapable of producing sound." 



Mr. Westwood remarked, that whereas authors had given the number of antennae 

 in the prawn as four, Mr. Newman had doubled it, and to arrive at this conclusion he 

 must have taken the threefold branches of two of them as distinct organs. 



Mr. Lubbock, in continuation, said that, on this hypothesis, the number of legs 

 should be quoted, as twenty instead often. 



Read also two papers by Mr. Newman : — 



' Description of two New Species of Thrips.' — Specimens of these insects were taken 

 in a jungle near Mysore, on the leaves of a species of Anacardium,by Major Hamilton, 

 and were sent by that gentleman inclosed in a letter to the Secretary. 



' Descriptions of some Australian Lepidoplera.' — In this paper the author has 

 described fifteen new species of Lepidoptera, taken by Mr. Oxley on the Mount 

 Alexander range, in the colony of Victoria. 



Note on Oak-</alls. 



Mr. Westwood read the following extract from the ' Gardener's Chronicle ' of 

 December 1st: — 



" I believe that it was only last year that the attention of the Entomological 

 Society of London was called to the existence of the hard oak-gall [Ci/nips Quercus. 



