Entomological Society. 4565 



Mr. Stainton exhibited a specimen of the rare Elachista triseriatella, taken by 

 Mr. Hogan near Dublin, and specimens of a new Simaethis, for which he proposed 

 the name S. Parietarire, the larvae having been found by Mr. Harding on Parietaria 

 officinalis. 



Luminosity of Helohia brevicollis. 

 Mr. Westwood said Mr. Gould had placed in his hands a specimen of the common 

 beetle Helobia brevicollis, which he found one evening lately near Windsor, having 

 been attracted thereto by its luminous appearance. Mr. Westwood thought the 

 luminosity was due to adherent particles of phosphorescent matter arising from some 

 decaying animal, or a Geophilus — one of the luminous Seolopendrae — on which the 

 Helobia had been feeding ; both these views, indeed, had been advanced with respect 

 to a luminous Goerius, at a Meeting of this Society on December 1st, 1851, by the 

 late Mr. Stephens, Mr. Curtis, and Mr. Smith. 



Motion communicated to Seeds by Insects. 



Mr. Janson, adverting to the Report of the discussion on this subject at the last 

 meeting, said that in his remarks on that occasion he did not mean to deny that any 

 motion could be communicated to the seeds by the imprisoned larvae, but he still 

 maintained that the possibility of larvae, perfectly enclosed in seeds, having the power 

 of causing the seeds to jump had not been explained. The instance quoted from 

 Kirby and Spence he did not think was analogous, for that was evidently a naked 

 chrysalis unencumbered by an extraneous envelope. 



Mr. Westwood read the statement in Kirby and Spence's * Introduction,'* which 

 had been referred to, where, alluding to Reaumur's Memoir upon the enemies of 

 caterpillars, they say, "Round the nests of the Processionary Bombyx'he found 

 numerous little cocoons suspended by a thread, three or four inches long, to a twig or 

 leaf, of a shortened oval form and close texture, but so as the meshes might be 

 distinguished. These cocoons were rather transparent, of a coffee-brown colour, and 

 surrounded in the middle by a whitish band. When put into boxes or glasses, or laid 

 in the hand, they surprised him by leaping. Sometimes their leaps were not more 

 than ten lines, at others they were extended to three or four inches, both in height 

 and length. When the animal leaps, it suddenly changes its ordinary posture (in 

 which the back is convex and touches the upper part of the cocoon, and the head and 

 arms rest upon the lower) and strikes the upper part with the head and tail, before its 

 belly, which thus becomes the concave part, touches the bottom. This occasions the 

 cocoon to rise in the air to a height proportioned to the force of the blow/' In the 

 same chapter of the 'Introduction 'it is also recorded by the author, " that in 1810 a 

 young lady informed him a friend had brought a similar chrysalis, which was found 

 attached by one end to the leaf of a bramble. It repeatedly jumped out of an open 

 pill-box that was an inch in height. When put into a drawer, in which some other 

 insects were impaled, it skipped from side to side over their backs, for nearly a quarter 

 of an hour, with surprising agility. Its mode of springing seemed to be by balancing 

 itself upon one extremity of its case. About the end of October one end of the case 

 grew black, and from that time the motion ceased ; and about the middle of April in 



* Vol. ii. page 299, 4th Edition. 

 XIII. F 



