liii 



be very destructive to the banana trees in that island. It is 

 Calandra [Sjphenopliorus) striatus of Fabricius, which has been 

 taken "in fabulous numbers" on the trunks of that tree, and of 

 which Mr. Wollaston himself took as many as fifty s^jecimens in a 

 few minutes, the larvae feeding deeply in the interior of the trees, 

 and the perfect beetles eating grooves for their exit to the surface 

 of the stems. The species appears to be a native of Brazil, 

 although specimens have been also received from India, Tasmania 

 and Japan, and it is clear that it has been introduced into Madeira 

 within the last twent}^ years. 



A memoir by Dr.Hagen on the possible mischief likely to result 

 in the United States by the extension of the ravages of the species 

 of White Ant, Termes flavipes^ and of the most advantageous 

 measures to be adopted against its inroads, is published in the 

 'American Naturalist' for 1876. 



The account of the injuries done to the eggs of fish, at Can- 

 nara, in India, by Corixa ovivora, published by myself in our 

 Transactions some years ago, has been supplemented by a state- 

 ment, made at the last meeting of the Natural History Societj^ of 

 Gorlitz, that the spawn of the Carp are attacked by the Ranatra 

 linearis, which sucks the blood out of the young organism ; the 

 only successful mode of preventing the mischief being to drain 

 the pools and restock them with fish. 



A curious notice of the different species of insects introduced 

 into America with the goods and packages sent to the Inter- 

 national Exhibition of Philadelphia was given, by Prof. C. V. Riley, 

 in the ' Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis ' 

 (October, 1876). A Committee was subsequently formed, with 

 Dr. J. L. Leconte as Chairman, for the purpose of drawing up an 

 account of these different introduced species, and their report is 

 published in the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sc. Philad. (Nov. 1876), in 

 which thirteen species of beetles, two Tineidce, four j)arasitic 

 Hymenoptera, and various small Coleoptera, mostly found in 

 mouldy specimens of straw goods from Italy are described. 



The Colorado Beetle {Doryyhora decemUneata), which has 

 committed such extensive ravages on the potato crops of North 

 America, has been the fruitful source of jDopular publications 

 during tlie past year. Tlie Prussian Government led the way by 

 having small models of the insect in its difi'erent states, and of 

 the potato-stem and leaf, extensively distributed; and the Privy 



