Ivi 



this memoir M. Taton describes some experiments made upon 

 frogs in order to discover whether the wounds of the Batrachians 

 infested with larvse owed their existence to the eggs having been 

 deposited by the parent fly on the sound skin of the frogs, 

 or in previous wounds, the result of which showed that the 

 parasite larvse only infested previously made wounds. Two, if 

 not three, distinct species of Muscidce were reared by M. Taton 

 and M. Girard, including Sarcophaga nurus, Rondani {hcemor- 

 rhoidalis, Meig.), and S. setinervis ? as determined by M. Bigot. 



A peculiar kind of industry, that of breeding maggots, has lately 

 been tried in Paris. Over the soil were spread large quantities of 

 stale fish, dead lobsters, odorous poultry, &c. The maggots, 

 which soon became abundant, were carefully picked out, and 

 packed in casks of galvanized iron, and finally sold for fish-bait 

 and chicken food. The remaining refuse was converted into 

 manure. The industry having become an intolerable nuisance, 

 in the neighbourhood was put a stop to by the police. (' Nature,' 

 Aug. 9, 1877.) 



A short article on the mode of life of the larvse of a species of 

 Phryganea, by Signor Silva de Bell Ville, has appeared in the 

 * Organo de la Soc. Zool. Argentina,' tome ii., Entrega iv. 



A curious instance of supposed Commensalism in larvse, as 

 distinguished from Parasitism, is recorded by Fritz Miiller, in 

 ' Nature' (Jan. 12, 1877). I have added a copy of this article to 

 my paper on "Lepidopterous Parasitism" (Trans. Ent. Soc. 1877), 



The agency of insects in effecting the impregnation of flowers 

 has recently attracted much attention ; and we find an entire 

 chapter devoted to the subject in Mr. Darwin's remarkable work 

 on ' The Effects of Cross- and Self-fertilisation in the Vegetable 

 Kingdom,' in which the perforation of flowers bj'^ bees for the 

 purpose of obtaining the nectar, and the effects thereby produced 

 on the fertilisation of the flowers, is dwelt upon at great length. 



The former work of Mr. Darwin's on the fertilisation of 

 Orchids, Sir John Lubbock's little work 'British Wild Flowers,' 

 and a memoir by Miiller in ' Bienen Zeitung' for June, 1876, 

 enter upon the same curious question ; and various articles on 

 this subject have appeared in ' Nature' during the past year, by 

 Hermann Miiller. 



A memoir, "On certain relations between plants and insects, 

 including not o'lly the modes of attraction, but the means of 



