Insects. 2613 



Second Brood of Silkworms (Bombyx Mori). — In the early part of April last I had 

 hatched some 250 or 300 silkworms : they were at first fed upon lettuce, and then, as 

 usual, on the mulberry leaf, perfected their wonderful course of life, and left me in 

 possession of about (upon rough estimate) 40,000 eggs : these were stowed in a closet, 

 and left with the full expectation of their usual production next spring. Chance 

 having led me to look at the eggs, I was astonished to find that all were in a forward 

 state (on August 14th, 1849) for hatching, and indeed numbers were already hatched. 

 I have at this moment some hundred or more of this second brood completing their 

 cocoons : they have been fed upon the mulberry entirely, and have been subject to a 

 disease which has killed many in a few hours. — Wm. Mc Pherson ; 3, Grote's Place, 

 BlacJcheath, October 8, 1849. 



Occurrence of Charceas Cespitis near Worthing. — In the early part of September a 

 relation of mine captured — in Clapham Woods, about four miles from Worthing — a 

 beautiful specimen of this insect, by beating it from hazel, in the middle of the day. 

 — H. Tompkins ; School Hill, Lewes, Sussex, October, 1849. 



Correction of a previous Error, Zool. 2369 and 2530. — Your readers will think 

 me like a newspaper writer, inventing a railway accident one day in order to con- 

 tradict it the next. Did not I say (Zool. 2369) that the Cleodora silacella, lucidella, 

 falciformis and ochroleucella of Mr. Stephens's cabinet were all one species ? Turn 

 to page 2530, and it there appears that I had recanted this opinion as far as regards 

 the falciformis of Mr. Stephens's cabinet, which I admitted was distinct from his 

 silacella ; and now I have to recant it with regard to lucidella, which has been this 

 summer taken in tolerable plenty by Mr. Shepherd, among rushes, at Hammersmith : 

 it is abundantly distinct from lappella of Linneus (the silacella of Mr. Stephens's 

 collection) and paucipunctella of Metzner (the falciformis of Mr. Stephens's collec- 

 tion) : whether the ochroleucella will also turn out to be a distinct species remains to 

 be seen. — H. T. Stainton; Mountsfield, Lewisham, October 15, 1849. 



Notes on Honey Bees not always being prepared with a place to go to when Swarming. 

 — Early in July, 1817, Mr. Charles Bowman, at that time gardener to the late Lord 

 Melbourne, had a second swarm rose and settled in a close-clipped hedge, a short 

 distance from the place where the stock stood. Here they continued fourteen days, 

 during which time they had formed no combs. Mr. Bowman gave them to me, and 

 I hived them, brought them home, and united them with one of my stocks in the 

 evening. Next morning I found the queen dead on the stool near the hive. The 

 circumstance of the bees remaining so long in that situation without commencing a 

 comb is extraordinary ; because had they been in a hive during the same time, combs 

 would have been formed, honey collected, and brood coming forward. In June, 1815, 

 in a small apiary in King's Newton, stood two stocks of bees, a few yards distant 

 from each other. Early in the forenoon of the day on which the circumstance took 

 place, one of them sent out a swarm, which settled about ten or fifteen yards from the 

 spot. Immediately after they were settled, and before they could be hived, the other 

 stock sent out a swarm, which, after making a short circular flight, entered into the 

 hive from which the first swarm had risen j they continued there about a fortnight, 

 when they again rose. In this case the spot could not have been previously chosen, 

 as it was an occupied hive. — John Green; Melbourne, Derbyshire, October, 1849. 



Curious fact in the Economy of the Honey Bee. — Careful and frequent observation 

 of the interior proceedings of a colony of bees (a swarm of the present season, located 

 in a unicomb hive), enables me to communicate a fact in the physiology of this insect 



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