77 



Vacancy in the Council. 



The President announced that a vacancy had occurred in the Council hy the 

 resignation of Dr. Knaggs ; that the Council recomraended to the Society the name 

 of Mr. Stainton for election to the vacant seat ; and that the next ordinary Meeting 

 of the Society would be a Special General Meeting, for the purpose of electing a new 

 member of Council. 



General Index to the Second Series of the ' Transactions.' 



The President also announced that the General Index to the Second or New Series 

 of the ' Transactions' was on the table, ready for gratuitous distribution among the 

 Members and Subscribers who bad paid Subscriptions for 1861. 



Exhibitions. 



Professor Westwood exhibited a box containing a number of illustrations of the 

 economy and transformations of various species of insects, which had recently been 

 presented to the Oxford Museum by Mr. S. Slone, of Brightbampton. Amongst these 

 were specimens of Volucella pellucens (together with its eggs and pupee), reared from 

 the nest of the common wasp, on the larva of which the larva of the Volucella feeds, 

 and on the outside of the nest of which the eggs are deposited. Also Anomalon Ves- 

 parum. Curt., reared from the comb of wasps' nests : some of the insects did not 

 appear till the end of three years, as stated at a previous Meeting of the Society by 

 Mr. Stone. Also specimens of various galls and their makers, or the parasites by 

 which the makers were destroyed : amongst these was a beautiful white cottony mass, 

 found on the ground-ivy, from which a small adscitory ichneumon had been pro- 

 duced ; also two Cecidomyia gails and their makers. Various illustrations of the 

 nests of insects made in the pith of bramble and elder twigs were exhibited, with the 

 insects reared from them, including several species of sawflies, three species of Cra- 

 bronidse, one Odynerus, together with species of Malachius, Dasytes and Anaspis, 

 Two beautiful varieties of Acronycta Alni were also contained in the box — one taken 

 at sugar, recorded in the ' Entomologist's Intelligencer' for 1856, and one bred on the 

 22nd of February, 1862, the larva having fed on whitethorn and alder. 



The President said he bad bred Anomalon Vesparum from Vespa rufa, but he un- 

 derstood that Mr. Stone's specimens were bred from Vespa vulgaris ; and it thus 

 appeared that the same parasite attacked two different species of wasp. 



Referring to Mr. Newman's exhibition, at the April Meeting of the Society, of a 

 pseudogynous specimen of Liparis dispar. Professor Westwood remarked that he 

 thought Mr. Newman's statement, that the antennae were those of a male, was not 

 strictly accurate ; the aiitenns were in fact intermediate between those of the male and 

 female. Neither was the specimen exhibited by Mr. Newman unique, for the Berlin 

 Museum possessed a pseudogynous specimen of Liparis dispar, which had been de- 

 scribed and figured some years ago by Dr. Klug, and the figure had since been repro- 

 duced in several works published in this country. 



Mr. F. Moore exhibited the cocoon of a new species of silkworm from Japan, pro- 

 bably allied to Bombyx Paphia ; the silk was of a delicate pale green colour. 



Mr. Lubbock exhibited the preparatory state of Psocus ; the whole body of the 

 larva was covered with hairs having terminal bulbs, which retained the grains of sand 



