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Note on Paussida:. 



Mr. Stevens read the following extract of a letter from Mr. R. W. Plant, dated 

 Port Natal, April 10, 1855:— 



" In the box I now send yon will find forty-seven or forty-eioht Paussidse : this is 

 an uncomuion piece of good fortune, and I must give you the history of this lot. 

 I stumbled on the locality by accident, about three months ago, and picked up six. 

 I revisited the spot for several days, though I had five miles to go, without seeing 

 another, till, remembering they preferred sultry weather, I watched for the next oppor- 

 tunity, and was rewarded with ten; afterwards the approach of a thunder-storm was 

 the signal to start, and beside my beetles I generally got a drenching. Respecting 

 their habits I think the notion that they live with the ants, or are at all desirous of their 

 society, is an error: all that I saw were close prisoners and jealously guarded: at first 

 my anxiety to secure them prevented much close or cool observation, but as my box 

 filled my curiosity revived, and at last it was possible to command myself sufficiently 

 to gratify it. The beetles are in the bottom of the tufts of grass, and, owing to the 

 small size and matted nature of the herbage, are very difficult to discover in that 

 position, but it is the business of the ants to find them, and well they perform it. 

 Their holes are usually along the edge of the grass (or at least it is there only they 

 are to be seen), and as each unlucky culprit of a Paussus is found, five or six or more 

 of the ants seize upon and drag him off" to their nest. I have seen the beetles, in 

 their efforts to escape, struggle out of the holes, but they are soon overtaken and 

 brought back again. The ants do not kill them on the spot, as they do some other 

 creatures, simply because they can convey them home alive, and the beetle does not 

 seem to possess or use any means of injuring the ants, trusting only to his strength in 

 the struggle, and is consequently soon overpowered by the number of what I take to 

 be his enemies. At first it would appear easy to solve the question by opening the 

 the ants' nests ; but as the soil breaks you lose the trace, and they are usually very 

 deep, so that nothing very definite results. I found pieces of elytra, but whether 

 from beetles that had died naturally or had been killed I cannot say. The sum of 

 my observations, therefore, amounts to this, — the Paussi do not seek the ants nor 

 remain with them voluntarily ; on the contrary, they use every possible exertion to 

 escape, though not one that I saw succeeded in doing so ; they are captives to the 

 ants; and for what other purpose should the latter toil in their capture, but in the 

 pursuit of their natural instinct to secure food wherever it is off'ered ?" 



On the Spirit with which Scientific Books should be Read and Studied. 

 Mr. Stainton read the following paper, intituled as above: — 



"He who takes up any scientific work, with the intention of reading it and 

 learning something therefrom, must do so with extreme caution: he must not, how- 

 ever celebrated the writer of the work may be, assume that all that he finds contained 

 in it is true ; he may admit that it may be true ; but he must bear in mind that it 

 only represents the state of knowledge of the writer at the time he wrote it. 



"All science is progressive; and future observation will certainly show that, 

 however elaborate the work may be, and however much in advance of other works on 



