82 



Exhibitions, |-c.. 



The Secretary read a letter addressed to him by Charles Barton, Esq., of Eope 

 Hill, LyiningtoD, requesting an explanation of a phenomenon he had observed in his 

 garden on the 21st ult. : the leaves of all the shrubs and plants were covered with 

 dust, which, with a half-inch object-glass, was found to consist of globules of one size, 

 like small pearl-barley ; with a quarter-inch object-glass these globules resembled the 

 ova offish, but were not perfectly' globular, being indented on one side. Some laurel 

 leaves, having some of the globular masses upon them, were exhibited to the meeting. 

 It was suggested by Mr. Saunders that most probably the dust consisted of the pollen 

 of some coniferous tree. 



Prof. Westwood exhibited a dry collodion plate, on the coating of which— con- 

 sisting of gelatine, collodion, nitrate of silver and tannin — considerable devastation 

 had been committed by Blatta orientalis ; and in reference thereto read the following 

 extract from a letter addressed by W. G. Ormerod, Esq., of Chagford, to Mr. Spence 

 Bate : — " The enclosed may possibly interest you as an entomologist, one of the 

 ' ologies' that I have not dabbled with. I find that the black beetles are particularly 

 fond of dry collodion plates, in the progress from wet to dry, when reared in a box in 

 a dark cupboard. Several had sufi'ered before I found out the cause. At last I caught 

 one black beetle in the act. The animal seems to have been particularly fond of the 

 thick collodion, by the way he has cleared it off at the corner : the alternate action 

 of the mandibles seems very clear." 



Prof. Westwood remarked that this was not the first instance he had known of 

 insects exhibiting a partiality for chemical substances, and mentioned the case of a 

 species of Ptinus which was found at Knightsb ridge, in great numbers,^congregated in 

 a bottle full of chemical solution. 



Mr. Waterhouse exhibited specimens of Scraptia nigricans, Sle., bred from rotten 

 oak wood, in the neighbourhood of London ; and of Trichonyx sulcicollis, one of the 

 Pselaphidae, taken also in the vicinity of London, by Messrs. Douglas and Scott. 



The President exhibited six specimens of Pentarthrum Huttoni, WolL, taken by 

 Mr. Reading in the Plymouth district ; and read the following extract froni a letter 

 received from Mr. Reading : — 



" The history of the enclosed specimens is simply this : — I purchased some mate- 

 rial used in gardening operations, amongst which was a cask of light construction, 

 made of birch with hazel hoops, in the stems and hoops of which this insect was 

 found. The cask had been stowed away in an out-house, with various kinds of wood 

 used for burning. There were but four examples of this insect known to Science pre- 

 vious to the capture of these, and they, too, were taken in Devonshire ; so that this 

 insect is purely Devonian. It was described by Mr. Wollaston in the ' Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History' for August, 1854, to which I beg to refer all those who 

 feel interested in the history of the species. After you have shown the specimens to 

 the Meeting, will you be pleased to present a pair of them to the Entomological So- 

 ciety, also a pair to the British Museum, and a pair to the collection of the Entomo- 

 logical Club." 



Mr. W. F. Kirby exhibited a specimen (the second) of Brahmsea Hearseyi, White. 

 Mr. White exhibited it at the Zoological Society a few months ago, and said that it 

 confirmed the characters by which he had separated the species from the Certhia, 

 Fab. : it was found in a collection of insects received direct from India. 



