2200 Insects. 



soma lubricipeda, and others. I have since examined other nettles, and found them 

 equally attractive. N®ne of the moths were feeding, but merely running about. — J. 



B. Ellman; Battel, June 17, 1848. 



Distance to which Diptera will fly in quest of Food. — Diptera being of very gene- 

 ral diffusion, it is not often that we can fix upon any species that is not, as the subject 

 of our observation, within the sphere it has occupied since its arrival at its ultimate 

 state of development. I have met, however, within this week past, several instances 

 that would lead to the belief that the range of individuals is often wider than might 

 be at first expected, from the preference they frequently show to particular spots. I 

 find that the flowers of the sallow and the sap exuding from the trunks of trees recently 

 felled, offer here a rallying point for most of the two-winged revellers of the district ; 

 and among the various inland species thus assembled, I have observed two which must 

 have wandered, at the least, four miles from the coast. The species I allude to are 

 Ccelopa simplex and Scatophaga maritima, of which I have taken one of the former, 

 and five or six of the latter, most of which are males. Both of them, especially the 

 first, occur in abundance under or upon sea-weed, on most parts of the coast. The 



C. simplex is fond of sweets, as it often occurs in profusion on the flowers of thistles, 

 growing near the sea-banks. We may account for the present stretch by supposing, 

 since there is almost a continuous wood betwixt the place of observation and the sea, 

 that these wanderers may have had many a baiting place before they reached their ne 

 plus ultra ! Add to this that they had the wind in their favour. Another instance of 

 search after food may be instanced in the Cheilosia mutabilis, of which I found a sin- 

 gle specimen in the flower of a celandine, the only one, so far as I could observe, in 

 bloom in the glen where I met with it, which was about half a mile long. This spe- 

 cies attaches itself by preference to the flowers of the Ranunculi. — James Hardy ; Pen- 

 manshiel, by Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, April 11, 1848. 



Capture of Tetanocera dorsalis. — I took a male of this pretty species among Junci, 

 on the 10th instant. T have been hitherto accustomed to find it only after June or 

 July.— Id. 



Descriptions of the British Species of Bees belonging to the Genus 

 Hylceus, Fab. Ent. Syst. 1793, and Prosopis of the same Author, 

 Syst. Piezat. 1804; and also of the Genus Cilissa of Leach. By 

 Frederick Smith, Esq., Curator to the Entomological Society. 



The bees of which this genus is composed have been considered to 

 be parasitical by all authors who have classified or written upon them, 

 excepting Mr. G. H. K. Thwaites, who, in the year 1841, reared seve- 

 ral specimens of two species from bramble-sticks : what was the na- 

 ture of the food stored up in the cells Mr. Thwaites did not discover : 

 he however describes the cocoons as being arranged end to end, the 

 upper ones producing males, which came out first, and subsequently 



