Entomological Society. 3439 



question how insect larvae came into human bodies ; the prevalent opinion seemed to 

 be that they were introduced with food : in illustration of which the President men- 

 tioned that at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, some of the serpents that had been fed 

 on flies, of which they were very fond, after a few weeks became greatly swollen, and 

 shortly died, when it was found that they were full of Dipterous larvae, which had 

 doubtless hatched from fertile eggs in the flies on which they fed, and had caused 

 their death. 



Mr. Douglas exhibited pieces of a stem of Solanum Dulcamara, gathered a few 

 days since, in which larvae of Gelechia costella were hybernating. 



Mr. Adam White exhibited a specimen of a Belostoma, an aquatic Hemipterous 

 insect, taken on board ship near Bassorah, in the Persian Gulf: many more were re- 

 ported by the captain to have fallen on the vessel from a "cloud" of them flying over. 



Mr. Saunders had often seen Belostornae two or three together, flying about in the 

 evening, near Bombay ; but it was something new to hear of them in such quantities, 

 and at sea. 



Mr. Douglas exhibited a specimen of Monochamus Sartor, taken last year on the 

 banks of the Regent's Canal ; and a specimen of Coccinella Reppensis, taken by him- 

 self last July, crawling on the ground in the hilly field, Headley-lane, near Mickleham. 



Mr. S. Stevens mentioned that again for the third season he had reared Dryophila 

 Anobioides from the same dry stump of broom ; and Mr. Smith remarked that for se- 

 ven successive years he had bred Ochina Ptinoides from a piece of dry ivy-stem in his 

 possession. 



The President directed attention to the insects presented by Mr. J. C. Bowring, 

 especially to the extraordinary parasite upon Fulgora candelaria, which was undoubt- 

 edly Lepidopterous, resembling a Bombyx or Orgyia, and for which Mr. Bowring pro- 

 posed the name of Epipyrops anomala. 



Mr. White alluded to a collection of insects sent from China by Mr. Fortune, in 

 which he had seen Dicranocephalus Wallichii, hitherto reputed to have been found in 

 Nepaul. 



Mr. Curtis read a paper on a method of removing mouldiness from preserved in- 

 sects, by means of the vapour of boiling alcohol, applied by an apparatus which he 

 described, to a whole drawer-full at a time, and in the course of a few minutes not a 

 trace of mould would remain, and not one of the insects required to be touched or 

 removed. 



Mr. Desvignes remarked that he had operated on some mouldy insects with naph- 

 tha in which a small portion of corrosive sublimate was dissolved ; but although an 

 effectual method, it occupied a long time to wash each insect. 



Mr. White, with reference to methods of preserving insects, said that the Italians 

 had a mode of preserving Crustacea so that the joints remained flexible ; some speci- 

 mens in the British Museum, received from Madame Power, had been thus pliant for 

 years. The means by which this was accomplished were not known. 



Mr. Douglas read the following translation from the Stettin ' Entomologische 

 Zeitung,' premising that it referred to an insect, still one of our rarest Lepidoptera, 

 and trusting it might be the means of many specimens being captured. 



" The Larva of Phorodesma smaragdaria, (Esper). By G. Koch, senr., Frankfort- 

 on-the-Maine. 



" Hitherto this larva and its natural history have been entirely unknown ; neither 

 Ochsenheimer, Treitschke, nor any other author has given any account of it ; if they 



