350 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of which were present, some swimming freely in the water, 

 but the greater part congregated in spherical masses about 

 the size of a small marble, each mass being surrounded by a 

 semitransparent filmy sort of skin or envelope, through which 

 the minute worms might be readily discerned with a pocket- 

 lens, tangled together and in a nearly quiescent state. I 

 believe them to have been the Vibrio undula of Mtiller 

 (' Animalcula Infusoria,' p. 46, tab. vi. figs. 4 — 6, 1785), or 

 some very closely-allied species ; and his figure gives an 

 exact representation of the appearance of the congregated 

 masses of woruis as presented in this instance, this habit 

 being characteristic of the species. He speaks of the masses 

 being sometimes collected round the branchlets of a conferva 

 (as given in one of his figures). The surrounding skin, which 

 I have alluded to above, I suspect to have been nothing more 

 than a pellicle of scum, &c., deposited from stagnant water, 

 perhaps rendered thick by evaporation. I was told there had 

 been a sudden squall of wind before there came on a heavy 

 rain, and my idea is that these organisms must have been 

 lifted up by the force of the wind, acting in a gyratory 

 manner, from some shallow pool in the neighbourhood, 

 reduced perhaps to a little more than a large puddle, in the 

 centre of which, from the drying up of the water around, the 

 organisms had collected. A boy at the station first noticed 

 them (i.e. the above spherical masses) falling on his coat, &c., 

 as the rain came on, and shortly after, as the rain fell more 

 heavily, the platform, so much as was not under shelter, — so 

 1 was told, — was covered with them. A ^ew had been 

 observed during a storm some days previous to the fall of 

 which the above is an account." 



[Of course, after giving this subject so careful an investi- 

 gation as I have done, with a different result, I cannot 

 accept Mr. Jenyns' solution, but adhere in all respects to the 

 opinion I have expressed (Entom. 312, No. 91). — Edivard 

 Newman.^ 



Rare Hymenoptera at Glanville's Wootlon. — Mr. F. Smith 

 exhibited three rare British Hymenopterous insects sent to 

 hirtfi by Mr. J. C. Dale, of Glanville's Wootton, in which 

 neighbourhood they had been captured. They were Myrme- 

 comoiphus rufescens (a remarkable species of Proctotrupidae), 

 Ichneumon glaucopterus and Osmia pilicornis. 



