1887.] Address. 73 



Manual of Conchology issued by the Philadelphia Society continues to 

 uphold its high reputation, due in a great measure to its being founded 

 on perhaps the finest collection in the world. 



Amongst the invertebrates of India, butterflies and moths find 

 most favour with entomologists. The recently issued second volume 

 of Mr. de Niceville's ' Butterflies of India,Burma and Ceylon' fully keeps 

 up the reputation achieved by the first volume. Mr. W. L. Distant has 

 given us the final instalment of his ' Rhopalocera Malayana,' and Mr. 

 F. Moore one of his ' Lepidoptera of Ceylon.' In Mr. A. G. Butler's 

 ? Illustrations of typical specimens of Lepidoptera Heterocera in the Bri- 

 tish Museum ' will be found many Indian species, and Mr. Gr. Semper at 

 Wiesbaden has published a work on the ' Butterflies of the Philippines 

 and the Indo-Malayan Lepidopterous fauna.' In the Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society are papers on the Lepidoptera collected by Commander 

 Carpenter in upper Burma during 1885-86 by Mr. Butler ; an im- 

 portant revision of the butterflies of the genus Parnassius by Mr. Elwes ; 

 on Lepidoptera collected by Major Yerbury in the N". W. Panjab by Mr. 

 Butler ; and a notice of a small collection of dragon-flies from Murree 

 in the Panjab by Mr. W. F. Kirby, almost the only special notice of 

 this family in India of recent years. In the Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History are papers ' on the genus Terias ' by Mr. A. Gr. Butler ; 

 on four new species of butterflies from Burma by Mr. H. Grose Smith ; 

 and the continuation of his contributions to our knowledge of Malayan 

 entomology by Mr. W. L. Distant. The same writer has a paper on 

 butterflies from Perak in the Entomologist ; and, in the Transactions of 

 the Entomological Society, the Rev. W. Fowler has one on a small col- 

 lection of the coleopterous family Languridce from Assam. In the Bul- 

 letin de la Societe Zoologique de France there is an important and in- 

 structive paper by M. R. Dubois on the production of light in certain 

 species of the coleopterous family Elateridce, which deals with the phe- 

 nomenon from a physiological point of view, and should be of great 

 service in similar investigations in India, where there are so many of 

 these light-bearing species. In the Berlin Entomologische Zeitschrift 

 is a learned paper by Canus on the honey-bee in ancient India which 

 will form the literary complement to Mr. Douglas' paper on Indian bees. 

 Though not strictly within the scope of this notice, I cannot omit 

 to mention the continuation of the great series of works connected 

 with the ' Voyage of the Challenger ' and those belonging to the ' Biologia 

 Centrali- Americana ' edited and published by Messrs. Godman and Salvin. 



Botany. — As regards botanical exploration, the past year has been 

 one of considerable activity. Dr. Aitchison, the indefatigable traveller 

 and botanist, who is also a member of our Society, was attached to the 



