290 Zoological Society. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



March 27, 1849.— Wm. Yarrell, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 

 The Secretary communicated to the Meeting a letter which had 

 been addressed to the Council by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 

 G.C.St.S., &c. &c, in which he gave the gratifying intelligence of 

 his having been assured by the Count Kisselef, Minister of the 

 Imperial Domains of Russia, that if it was possible to obtain another 

 Male Aurochs, it would afford his Excellency the greatest pleasure to 

 receive the high command of His Majesty the Emperor for its 

 transmission to the Society. Although the communication of Count 

 Kisselef did not amount to an absolute promise, Sir Roderick ex- 

 pressed his conviction, that with so earnest an intention of assisting 

 the Society on the part of the confidential Minister of his Imperial 

 Majesty, there was still a chance of the Aurochs again living and 

 reproducing its species in Britain. 



The following paper was read : — 

 Monograph of the large African species of Nocturnal 

 Lepidoptera belonging or allied to the genus Satur- 

 nia. By J. O. Westwood, F.L.S. etc. 



Linnaeus, in pursuance of the plan which he generally adopted, of 

 placing the largest species of any group at its head, introduced as the 

 first species of the Nocturnal Lepidoptera (the whole of which con- 

 stituted in his System but one genus, Phalcena) those gigantic moths 

 of which the Phalcena Atlas may be considered as the type, distin- 

 guished both by himself and Fabricius by the character " alls pa- 

 tulis." Placed thus at the head of this great division, and being in 

 themselves some of the most gigantic and at the same time most 

 beautiful of the insect tribes, — valuable also to the human race on 

 account of the product obtained from several of the species, — I have 

 thought that a synopsis of the African species (a considerable number 

 of which are now for the first time described and figured, and several 

 of which, being inhabitants of Southern Africa, appear as likely to 

 afford a supply of silk as their Indian relatives,) would not be with- 

 out interest. 



So little however has hitherto been effected in the classification of 

 the nocturnal exotic Lepidoptera, even of the larger species, and in 

 fact so completely have the chief characters, on which a real distri- 

 bution of these insects can alone be established — I allude more espe- 

 cially to the arrangement of the veins of the wings and the transfor- 

 mations of the insects — been neglected, that it is impossible, without 

 a revision of the whole of the family Bombycidce, to arrive at the most 

 satisfactory plan of arrangement of a geographical selection of the 

 species. It will however not be useless to notice the attempts which 

 have been made relative to the arrangement of these insects. Dr. 

 Boisduval, in his * Genera et Index Methodicus,' has divided the 

 Heterocera into a number of tribes of equal rank, amongst which is the 



