100 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



triangularly, I have received all my West-African butterflies 

 quite safe, and set them at my leisure, after relaxing them in 

 a box of bruised laurel-leaves. — C S. Gregson. 



Does the Spider eat its own weh ? — " Rennie, in his * Insect 

 Architecture,' asserts that the common garden spider does 

 not eat its own web. A close observation has convinced me 

 that it does. After cutting a web, so that it hung only by a 

 thread, the spider came out, gathered the whole up, soaked it 

 with the glutinous liquid from its mouth, carried it to its 

 den corner, and then, opening its jaws, took the entire ball 

 in. The thought, hov^^ever, struck me, Was the mass con- 

 veyed into the proper stomach of the insect, or into some 

 cavity whence it might be reproduced through the spinnerets.^ 

 I should feel much obliged if you could answer this question, 

 for I can assert that the web was swallowed." — Notes and 

 QuerieSf 1856. This paragraph implies that the subject 

 lately introduced into the 'Entomologist' had been discussed 

 prior to the publication of Rennie's ' Insect Architecture.' 

 Like my valued correspondent Mr. Pickard-Cambridge, I 

 repudiate all participation in the idea that a spider can 

 swallow web ; but then I totally disbelieve in toads in stone, 

 spirit-rapping, vipers swallowing their young, and all other 

 miracles that constitute the stock-in-trade of wonder-loving 

 naturalists ; but I cannot conceal from myself the fact that 

 this disbelief does not in any respect amount to evidence 

 against these supposed phenomena. — E. Newman. 



Abstract of the Proceedings of the Entomological Society, 



March 21, 1870. 



English Locusts. — Mr. Dunning exhibited a locust captured 

 near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in the autumn of 1849 : the prolhorax 

 was flat and constricted in front, and notwithstanding the 

 contention of Prof. Westwood (Entom. v. 85), he thought this 

 was the true Locusta migratoria of Linne. The appeal to 

 tradition did not tell entirely on one side : Fabricius when he 

 described cinerascens was acquainted with migratoria, and it 

 was clear from his description that cinerascens was the form 

 with the arched prothorax ; consequently migratoria, from 

 which Fabricius separated cinerascens, w^as according to his 



