Entomological Society. 5153 



intimate acquaintance with the economy of this Papilio. I have no doubt respecting the 

 following account: the eggs are laid in succession from the middle of April to the end 

 of Juue, but the larger portion during the months of April and May ; the larva may 

 be found during the whole of the months of May, June and July: a fine specimen of 

 the perfect insect appears at the end of July, but the greater number during the month 

 of August, then (or many of them at least) live till the following spring, and deposit 

 their eggs on the buds and terminal shoots of Rhamnus frangula, so that it is clear the 

 perfect insect occasionally lives a twelve-month ; the females have at the present time 

 well developed eggs within them," 



Mr. Douglas read a paper, by Mr. Adam White, entitled " Descriptions of an ap- 

 parently Nondescript Species of Necrodes, from Borneo, with brief descriptions of three 

 other species from Northern China and India." 



Mr. Smith read a paper entitled " Observations on the Difficulties attending the 

 discrimination of the Species of the Genus Stylops," in which he stated that all parts 

 of the body of the male Stylops are of so soft and delicate a nature, that in a few hours 

 after death the entire appearance of the insect is changed, becoming a mere shrivelled 

 mass, and in consequence nearly all the published figures of these insects, having been 

 drawn from cabinet specimens, are mere "miserable caricatures:" he expressed his 

 opinion that it may hereafter appear that we have but oue species of Stylops in this 

 country. 



Mr. Westwood thought Mr. Smith's strictures on the published figures of Stylops 

 rather too severe ; he might at least have made an exception in favour of his (Mr. 

 Westwood's) figures of Stylops Spencei in the third volume of the ' Transactions,' which 

 were drawn from the living insect. 



Mr. Douglas read from Guerin's ' Revue de Zoologie,' for December last, the fol- 

 lowing part of a communication made to the Editor by Dr. Richard : — 



JEpeira Senegalensis. 



"The spiders upon which I experimented were taken on a Baobab tree placed in 

 the courts of Goree, where there was a deal of noise : their number on the tree is such 

 that they are seen from afar when the tree is stripped of its leaves ; they appear to live 

 by preference near inhabited places, either, as I have reason to believe, because they 

 like noise, or, more probably, they are kept near to man by the abundance of the in- 

 sects on which they prey, and which are attracted by the debris of human aliments : 

 moreover, it is an extraordinary fact that they persist in remaining upon this Baobab, 

 notwithstanding they may be constantly disturbed by the blacks who collect its leaves 

 (aloo) for couscous.* This spider neither stings nor bites : it is only when pressed by 

 hunger that it is disposed to take the flies that are given to it ; it swallows them body 

 and wings entire ; one of those that I reared swallowed three of them consecutively in 



* The leaves of the Baobab are emollient, as in the greater part of the Malvaceae, 

 to which Order this king of vegetables belongs : they are used in medicine under the 

 name of aloo, and the blacks make use of them in the preparation of couscous, to 

 which they add a certain gout, and especially the property of gliding more easily, by 

 setting their mucilage at liberty. 



XIV. 2 G 



