XVll 



September 5, 1877. 

 Professor J. 0. Westwood, M.A., F.L.S., President, in the chair. 



Donations to the Library were announced, and thanl^s voted to the 

 donors. 



Exhibitions, dc. 



Mr. F. Smith exhibited, on behalf of Mr. G. A. James Rothney, a fine 

 collection of Hymenoptera, collected in the neighbom'hood of Calcutta 

 during the past season. The majority of the species belonged to the 

 fossorial division ; among them were several fine species of Sphegidcn and 

 Bemlicidce. In the collection were several new species of the genus Cerceris, 

 also a few new species oi Apida, the whole series being in the finest possible 

 condition. 



Mr. M'Lachlan exlubited drawings (with details) of the extraordinary 

 insect from Java, described by Wesmael in 1836, under the name of 

 Himanopteruii fuscinervls, as pertaining to the Lepidoptera. The insect 

 remains to this day unique in the collection of the Brussels Museum. In 

 1866 Dr. Hageu translerred Himanopterus to the Neuroptera as a sub- 

 genus of Nemoptera. No palpi nor legs existed in the insect when first 

 described, but from the neuration, general form, nature of the clothing, &c., 

 Mr. M'Lachlan is quite certain it has nothing to do with Nemoptera, and is 

 truly lepidopterous, allied to the North Lidian insect described and figured 

 by E. Doubleday as Thymara zoida. 



Prof. Westwood stated that in 1876 he had also studied the type, and 

 made drawings and agreed as to its position near Thymara. 



Mr. M'Lachlan also exhibited leaves of a large species of Acer from trees 

 growing in the grounds of Mons. van Volxen, at Lacken, near Brussels. 

 These trees were many of them fifty feet in height, and almost each leaf 

 had one or more large white blotches on it, being the mines of a small 

 sawfly desci'ibed by Kaltenbach as Phyllotoma aceris, a species occurring in 

 England on the wild Acer campiestre. The insect only first appeared in 

 M. van Volxen's grounds last year, and was now in such extraordinary 

 profusion that the flattened discs formed by the larv£e when full fed made 

 quite a pattering noise as they fell from the trees. Unless the insect 

 should disappear as rapidly as it came, there is every possibility that 

 the combined attacks of the myriads of larvae may seriously damage the 

 trees. 



Prof. Westwood exhibited specimens of two minute hymenopterous insects 

 from Ceylon, closely allied to Mymar pulchellim, a British species. 



Prof. Westwood also exhibited the two sexes of Narycius{Cyphonocephahis) 

 smarafidnlm, sent to him by Mr. James Wood-Mason, having been taken in 



D 



