672 Chronicles of Science. [Oct., 



members of the Society as one of our foremost entomologists, cor- 

 roborating the accuracy of his statement. Mr. Fry writes, " I can 

 confirm your observations that the fire-flies of the genus Aspisoma 

 flit at night in great numbers over low-lying damp fields, chiefly near 

 water, emitting light at short intervals of three or four seconds, the 

 majority keeping time with each other, as if in obedience to the baton 

 of a leader. I think it is only the fire-flies of that genus who practise 

 it. The numerous fire-flies common in Mexico and North America 

 belong chiefly to the genera Ellychnia and Photuris, whose habits 

 are different, so far as I have had an opportunity to observe their 

 congeners in Brazil." ' The Reader ' (April 1, 1865) observes, " Here 

 is a new insect-wonder, before which the economy of bees and ants 

 will sink into insignificance." Another moot-point, which has lately 

 occasioned the revival of an old controversy, respects the luminosity 

 of the lantern-fly * (Fulgora laternaria). The general opinion of the 

 leading entomologists, including those who have seen them in their 

 native haunts, is that they are not luminous ; but a letter was read 

 from an inhabitant of Belize, in which it was stated that the writer 

 had kept one " a day " and that it was " decidedly luminous." It is 

 not by off-hand statements that such problems are to be decided, 

 though there seems to be no impossible reason why what has been 

 asserted by so many should not be to a certain extent true. 



Athough Bibliography scarcely enters into these Reports, it would 

 be an omission not to mention such a work as has been just published 

 by the Bay Society. It is on the ' British Hemiptera-Heteroptera,' 

 by Messrs. Douglas and Scott, and forms a thick handsome octavo 

 volume, with twenty-one exquisite plates by Mr. Robinson. Many of 

 the non-entomological members of that Society will be astonished to 

 find what numbers of strange and beautifully-coloured forms are 

 living around them, belonging to a group of which the only member 

 they know is the disgusting bed-bug. So far as we can judge — for 

 the work has only been in our possession a few hours — the authors 

 have executed their task most carefully and conscientiously, but it is 

 to be regretted that they had not adopted a less ramified and com- 

 plicated system than that of Dr. Fieber. Besides the divisions, 

 sub-divisions, and sections, some of them with very uncouth and not 

 very classical names, we find that the land-species alone described in 

 this volume are distributed into not less than fifty-four families. 



Entomological Society. 



At the June meeting of this Society, letters were read from Mr. 

 Edwin Reed, who has recently gone to Bahia with the intention of 

 collecting in that, entomologically, little known locality, and from Mr. 



* The lantern-flies do not belong to the Phasmidae, as a writer in the ' Natural 

 History Review' (1865, p. 19) has stated, hut to the Fulgoridse. The two 

 families do not even belong to the same order. Is this the writer who thinks that 

 " ex-professo entomologists should blush " (id., p. 198) because Mr. Lubbock 

 accidently found an aquatic Hymenopteron in a basin of pond -water ? 



