Entomological Society. 4799 



Proceedings of Societies, 



Entomological Society. 



July 2, 1855. — John Curtis, Esq., President, in the chair. 



Donations. 



The following; douations were announced, and thanks ordered to he given to the 

 donors :— * Proceedings of the Royal Society,' Vol. vii., No. 13 ; by the Society. * The 

 Literary Gazette ' for June ; by the Editor. ' The Journal of the Society of Arts ' for 

 June ; by the Society. ' The Zoologist' for July ; by the Editor. ' Revue et Magasin 

 de Zoologie,' 1855, No. 5 ; by the Editor, M. Guerin Meneville. ' Monograph on the 

 British Species of Phalaugidoe or Harvest-men'; by R. H. Meade, F.R.C.S.; by the 

 Author. ' Saussure's Monographic des Guepes Sociales', Cahir, No. 7 ; by the Author. 

 A specimen of the mole cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris) ; by Mr. J. P. Edwards, of Lynd- 

 hurst, Hants. 



Election of Members. 



John Walter Lea, Esq., of Ramsgate, and Alexander Fry, Esq., of Montague 

 Square, were balloted for, and elected members of the Society, 



Exhibitions. 



Mr. Meade returned and exhibited the collection of British Arachnida,' preserved in 

 glass tubes, formerly presented by him to the Society, aud which had recently been for- 

 warded to him for the purpose of replenishing the spirit in the tubes : he had also 

 considerably increased the number of species in the collection, which now numbers 

 ninety-four true spiders and thirteen Phalangidae. Mr. Meade stated that he now 

 employed as a substitute for spirit, a saline solution composed of equal weights 

 of water and sulphate of magnesia, with the addition of a small quantity of alcohol 

 and sulphuric acid ; this does not injure the colours of spiders, as spirit almost 

 invariably does. 



Mr. Foxcroft sent for exhibition a small box of Lepidoptera, recently taken in 

 Perthshire ; it also contained the silken galleries formed in ants' nests by the laTvae of 

 Tinea ochraceella, Teng. 



Mr. Stevens exhibited a splendid new longicorn beetle from Tana, New Hebrides, 

 for which Mr. Adam White proposed the name of Psalidocoptus scaber. 



Mr. Westwood read a note from a correspondent, who had found the larvae of 

 Meloe in immense numbers on potato-plants " hanging in clusters like swanns 

 of minute beesjj' he also exhibited some of the larvae which had been forwarded to 

 him. 



Mr. Janson exhibited two specimens, one of which he presented to the Society's 

 cabinet, of Hypulus quercinus, Payk., taken by him on the same stump of oak which 

 yielded the species last year at Colney Hatch. 



Mr. Smith announced that Mr. Frederick Grant had recently discovered colonies 

 of Tapinoma erratica at Wimbledon and Weybridge ; he also exhibited the female of 



