4970 Entomological Society. 



shoots killed, with the evident cause burdened upon them. It is clear to me that 

 fresh trees are attacked every year by the increasing insect that produces the galls, 

 and what can be done to stay their assaults? Though I only counted 91 trees in the 

 Worle Hill plantations, I dare say I could have doubled this number by going 

 deeper within the coppice ; but say that only these 91 oaks had 50 gall-nuts on a 

 tree— although many had hundreds of them — that only would give more than 4500 of 

 the Cynips to commence the next season with, so that next year instead of only 

 91 trees attacked I may expect to find thousands, on every tree perhaps throughout 

 the plantations. The mischief is that the oaks are certainly rendered barren by these 

 hard gall-nuts, and wherever they occurred on the larger trees there were no acorns at 

 all produced. It has been suggested that these gall-nuts may be used in the manu- 

 facture of ink, but I should doubt to such a profitable extent as to keep the oaks 

 entirely for that purpose; and if not it is but a poor consolation to have ink produced 

 only to record the destruction of plantations made and kept up at some expense in the 

 hope of good timber being some day ripe for sale. Can any suggestion, then, be made 

 upon the subject now, before the Cynipidal hordes have spread to all the oak trees in 

 the country, whether of Qtiercus robur or Q. sessiliflora ? — Sylvanus, St. John's, near 

 Worcester." 



Note on Paussidce. 

 Mr. Stevens read the following extract of a letter from Mr. R. W. Plant, dated 

 Port Natal, April 16, 1855:— 



" In the box I now send you will find forty-seven or forty-eight Paussidae : this is 

 an uncommon piece of good fortune, and I must give you the history of this lot. 

 I stumbled on the locality by accident, about three months ago, and picked up six. 

 I revisited the spot for several days, though I had five miles to go, without seeing 

 another, till, remembering they preferred sultry weather, I watched for the next oppor- 

 tunity, and was rewarded with ten ; afterwards the approach of a thunder-storm was 

 the signal to start, and beside my beetles I generally got a drenching. Respecting 

 their habits I think the notion that they live with the ants, or are at all desirous of their 

 society, is an error: ail that I saw were close prisoners and jealously guarded: at first 

 my anxiety to secure them prevented much close or cool observation, but as my box 

 filled my curiosity revived, and at last it was possible to command myself sufficiently 

 to gratify it. The beetles are in the bottom of the tufts of grass, and, owing to the 

 small size and matted nature of the herbage, are very difficult to discover in that 

 position, but it is the business of the ants to find them, and well they perform it. 

 Their holes are usually along the edge of the grass (or at least it is there only they 

 are to be seen), and as each unlucky culprit of a Paussus is found, five or six or more 

 of the ants seize upon and drag him off to their nest. I have seen the beetles, in 

 their efforts to escape, struggle out of the holes, but they are soon overtaken and 

 brought back again. The ants do not kill them on the spot, as they do some other 

 creatures, simply because they can convey them home alive, and the beetle does not 

 seem to possess or use any means of injuring the ants, trusting only to his strength in 

 the struggle, and is consequently soon overpowered by the number of what I take to 

 be his enemies. At first it would appear easy to solve the question by opening the 

 the ants' nests ; but as the soil breaks you lose the trace, and they are usually very 

 deep, so that nothing very definite results. I found pieces of elytra, but whether 

 from beetles that had died naturally or had been killed I cannot say. The sum of 



