4612 Entomological Society. 



Italy; and Mr. Westvvood added that Professor Solly had made seve- 

 ral experiments on the cocoons brought to England, and he believed 

 a method of unwinding the silk from the cocoons had been discovered. 

 At Vienna a number of experiments have been made with a view to 

 introduce the silk of Saturnia pavonia-media as an article of com- 

 merce : the few particulars yet known were introduced to your notice 

 by myself at a late meeting of the Society. From the information I 

 have received on this subject it seems highly probable that these ex- 

 periments will lead to the most important results, since the insect not 

 only produces the raw material, but completes the fabric without 

 the intervention of machinery. Nevertheless on these important topics 

 a few commercial questions necessarily obtrude themselves : for in- 

 stance, is there any difficulty in obtaining an ample supply of silk 

 from the well-known silkworm ? will the new species, or either of them, 

 bear a greater degree of cold than the silkworm of China ? can the silk 

 be produced cheaper ? is it more durable — of finer quality or colour? 

 The man of science will be interested in all such discoveries as those 

 to which I have alluded, but before we can engage the merchant in 

 the cause we must point out to him its pecuniary advantages. 



The materials used by wasps for the paper-like substance of which 

 their nests are composed was brought under consideration, by the late 

 Mr. Ingpen, at the July and August meetings : having detected fungoid 

 matter in the nest of an exotic wasp, he thought it probable that 

 those of our native species were not altogether composed of wood, as 

 is generally believed ; and, in corroboration of this idea, that lamented 

 entomologist exhibited a piece of decayed wood from one of the cedars 

 in the Botanic Garden at Chelsea, in which was a layer of fungus, and 

 wasps were observed to frequent this, apparently for the purpose of 

 obtaining building materials : in support of such a supposition I took 

 occasion to observe to you that a mass of anomalous matter, cut from 

 a wooden rail, had been found, on a microscopic examination, to be 

 entirely fungoid. In connexion with this subject were two other 

 statements of much interest: the first from the late lamented Mr. 

 Wing, that he had seen w 7 asps collecting the tomentum of a mullein ; 

 the other from Mr. Watkeys, that he had seen wasps at work on the 

 stems of dead and dried nettles. I observed that all other speakers 

 on the subject strove to establish the fact that wasps had been seen in 

 the act of detriting the surface of palings, &c, a fact that I previously 

 conceived to be so notorious as not to need this reiteration. Revert- 

 ing, then, to the question raised by Mr. Ingpen, " What is the material 

 actually used by wasps ? " I am able with confidence to announce the 



