xvm 



the Nielgherries. One of the males exhibited was of a purple coloui\ The 

 insect had remained almost unique since first described by Prof. Westwood, 

 in 1842, in his 'Arcana Entomologica' (vol. i., p. 115). 



Mr. J. Wood-Mason exhibited the two sexes of Phyllothelys Westwoodi, 

 one of the remarkable species of MantidcB, as to which he had observed and 

 pointed out (in Proc. As. Soc. Beng., August, 1876, and in Ann. and Mag. 

 Nal. Hist., 1876) that the females are distinguished by the presence either 

 of a well-developed foliaceous frontal horn (as in Phyllocrania) or of a great 

 vertical cephalic cone (as in Blepharis or Gongylus) from the males, wherein 

 these processes are represented by mere rudiments ; and stated that a pair 

 of Hestias Brunneriana, another of the species in which this interesting 

 and novel kind of distinction between tlie sexes had been observed, was in 

 the collection of the British Museum, under the MS. name of Oxypilus 

 pictipes. The latter appeared to be a species common in collections ; but 

 of the former he had hitherto seen but five specimens — three females (one 

 a nymph) and two males — all, even the nymph, exhibiting the sexual 

 differences referred to equally and perfectly. The specimens exhibited 

 ■were, the male from Upper Tenasserim, and the female from Sibsagar, in 

 Assam. 



Mr. Mason next exhibited a beautifully executed drawing of the great 

 stridulating spider from Assam, Mygale stridulans, in a stridulating attitude. 

 This sketch was by Mr. S. E. Peal, who had likewise furnished Mr. Mason 

 with a detailed description of the habits of the creature. 



Mr. Mason further announced the discovery of stridulating organs in scor- 

 pions. While recently working at the anatomy of a species allied to S. afer, 

 he had met with structures which, from his familiarity with the analogous 

 ones in other Arthropods, crustaceans as well as insects, he had at once 

 without hesitation determined to be sound-producing apparatus — even before 

 he had found that sounds could be produced by them artificially by rubbing the 

 parts together or accidentally in the mere handling of alcoholic specimens. 

 He had, however, been enabled to place the matter beyond all doubt; for 

 while at Bombay, waiting for the steamer, he had obtained, by a happy 

 chance from some Hindustani conjurors, two large living scorpions belonging 

 to another species of the same type ; these, when fixed face to face on a 

 light metal table and goaded into fury, at once commenced to beat the air 

 with their palps and simultaneously to emit sounds, which were most 

 distinctly audible, not only to himself, but also to the bystanders, above the 

 clatter made by the animals in their efforts to get free, and which resembled 

 the noise produced by continuously scraping a piece of silk-woven fabric, or, 

 better still, a stiff tooth-brush with one's finger-nails. The species — a gigantic 

 one from the Upper Godaveri district— in which he had first observed 

 stridulating organs had these organs more highly developed than in the one 

 experimented upon at Bombay, and must stridulate far more loudly, for by 



