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In the ' Transactions ' of this Society have appeared various 

 papers by Messrs. Hewitson, Moore, Lubbock, Schaum, Verloren, 

 WoUaston, Desvignes, Stainton, M'Lachlan, Smith, Walker, Water- 

 house and Trimen, and these are illustrated by thirteen plates. You 

 are too well acquainted with the subject of these papers to render 

 it necessary for me to recapitulate them. All the papers have been 

 read during the last two years, and so nearly have we now succeeded 

 in printing all the communications in hand, that the complaint, so often 

 made of papers being read and then shelved for years, may be said to 

 be no longer applicable to this Society. For this we are mainly 

 indebted to our able and energetic Secretary, Mr. Dunning. 



The ' Zoologist,' as [usual, contains a large amount of useful in- 

 formation, notices of localities for rare insects, modes of capture and 

 habitats of insects, also valuable notices of appearances of species in 

 great numbers, &c. I am also happy to find that our Member, Mr. 

 J. W. May, favours us with a continuation of the " Life-Histories of 

 Sawflies, translated from the Dutch of M. Snellen Van VoUenhoven." 

 These truly scientific and valuable contributions are a great boon to 

 English Hymenopterists, so few having any knowledge of the lan- 

 guage in which the original papers are written. I would also mention 

 a paper by Mr. Edwin Brown, " On the Plan upon which Bees and 

 Wasps construct their Cells." The theory here announced, is, if I 

 mistake not, that propounded by Mr. Waterhouse in the ' Penny Cy 

 clopsedia ' not less, I believe, than twenty-five years ago. I will not 

 trespass on your patience by reiterating my own views of this theory, 

 having done so in various communications to this Society long ago, 

 but I will call attention to one or two points. Mr. Brown says, "Every 

 cell during its progress is impinged upon by six other cells, and, as 

 all progress at the same time, produce inevitably the hexagonal struc- 

 ture." In order to prove that it is not necessary that a cell should 

 be impinged upon by six others, I will refer Mr. Brown to the sixth 

 plate that illustrates my ' Catalogue of the Vespidse,' in which a faith- 

 ful representation of a' nest of Icaria guttatipennis is figured, showing 

 six hexagonal cells standing in a row on the branch of a shrub. 

 Again it is stated " It is only when another line of cells is in process 

 of erection that the cells in the outer ring assume a hexagonal shape." 

 This is true, but I possess portions of wasps' combs, or rather the 

 beginnings of combs, in which perhaps twenty are completed, others 

 being only just commenced at their base, the rest are carried up to 

 their full height ; but had the parent wasp or wasps, as the case might 

 be, not intended to have extended the comb beyond that limit, I am 



