1865.] Entomology. 671 



time to develope, as they come out in the same summer in which the 

 gall first appears. The agamic series appears in the winter, that is, 

 from October to December. A third series, including the genera 

 Aulax, Diastrophus, and Mhodites, is delayed to the second summer ; of 

 these the males are much rarer than the females. 



Dr. A. Laboulbene * has given a long account of the musical organs 

 of a moth (Chelonia pudica). These were discovered more than thirty 

 years ago by M. Villars, but the subject has not excited much attention. 

 They exist in both sexes, but are larger in the males, and consist of a 

 hollow triangular cavity, covered by a thin dry membrane, placed on 

 each side of the thorax, close to the insertion of the inferior wings. 

 The sounds, which the writer compares to that of a stocking-maker's 

 machine, are, he considers, caused by little taps given by the legs on 

 the membrane, or by rapid lateral motion of the knees. Many species 

 of the genus Setina are also furnished with similar organs, but their 

 size varies in the females, some having them nearly as large as in the 

 males, while in others they are scarcely distinguishable. There are 

 somewhat analogous organs found in other members of the family 

 Lithosiidaa, to which these two genera belong, but they are generally 

 covered with scales, and are not calculated to produce sounds. In 

 one species — Pericopis Isse — they attain to the highest degree of deve- 

 lopment, while in a very nearly allied form they do not exist. 



A new position for a sound-producing apparatus has just been 

 brought under the notice of the Entomological Society by Mr. Pascoe. 

 The insect in which it occurs is a species of the lamellicorn genus 

 Bolboceras, from Australia. The upper portion of its posterior coxa 

 has certain grooved lines which correspond to another series of grooved 

 lines in the cotyloid cavity, and the friction of one against the other 

 causes a grating sound, just as a similar structure of the portion of the 

 mesothorax lying under the prothorax produces the sounds so well known 

 in many longicorn beetles, and which has earned for the Prionus cori- 

 ai'ius in some parts of Germany the name of the " fiddler." 



At a meeting of the Entomological Society in the spring, the Eev. 

 Hamlet Clark, citing a passage from ' Cameron's Travels ' in Malayan 

 India, in which a. statement was made that fire-flies (Lampyridas) 

 appeared to have a habit of exhibiting and extinguishing their light 

 contemporaneously, remarked that he had observed a similar habit in 

 the fire-flies of Brazil. This assertion appears to have occasioned 

 some surprise : Mr. Bates, who had himself found some eighty or 

 ninety species in the Amazons region, thought, on the contrary, that 

 there was no concert between the different individuals, and that the 

 contemporaneous flashing was an illusion produced probably by the 

 swarms of the insects flying amongst foliage, and being continually, 

 but only momentarily, hidden behind the leaves. Mr. W. Wilson 

 Saunders in India, and M. Salle in Mexico, had also never remarked 

 any intermittency in the light. At the July meeting, however, Mr. 

 Clark read an extract of a letter from Mr. Fry, a gentleman who had 

 resided many years in Brazil, and who is well known to many 



* 'Ann. Soc. Entom. de France,' t. iv. p. 689 et seq., 4 mc ser. 



