SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 35 



Entomological Society of London. 



December 4, 1889.-— The Right Hon. Lord Walsingham, M.A., F.R.S., 

 President, in the chair. 



Prof. Franz Klapalek, of the Zoological Department, Royal Museum, 

 Prague, was elected a Fellow of the Society. 



Mr. W. L. Distant exhibited, on behalf of Mr. Lionel de Niceville, a 

 branch of a walnut tree, on which was a mass of eggs laid by a butterfly 

 belonging to the Lyccenida. He also exhibited two specimens of this butterfly, 

 which Mr. de Niceville had referred to a new genus and described as 

 Chcetoprocta odata. The species was said to occur only in the mountainous 

 districts of North- West India, at elevations of 5000 to 10,000 feet above 

 the sea-level. 



Dr. D. Sharp exhibited the eggs of Piezosternum subulatum, Thunb., 

 a bug from South America. These eggs were taken from the interior of a 

 specimen which had been allowed to putrefy before being mounted. Although 

 the body of the parent had completely rotted away, the eggs were in a perfect 

 state of preservation, and the cellular condition of the yelk was very con- 

 spicuous. Dr. Sharp also exhibited a specimen of Pcecilochroma lewisii, Dist., 

 a Pentatomid bug from Japan of a dull green colour, which when damped 

 with water became almost instantly of a metallic copper colour. 



Mr. J. H. Leech exhibited a large number of Lepidoptera recently 

 collected for him by Mr. Pratt in the neighbourhood of Ichang, Central 

 China. The collection included about fifty-four new species of butterflies 

 and thirty-five new species of moths. 



Capt. Elwes observed that he noticed only two genera in this collection 

 which did not occur at Sikkim, and that the similarity of the insect fauna 

 of the two regions was very remarkable. He added that about fifteen years 

 ago, in a paper " On the Birds of Asia," he had called attention to the simi- 

 larity of species inhabiting the mountain ranges of India, China, and Java. 



Mr.M'Lachlan remarked that he had lately received a species of dragon- 

 fly from Simla which had previously only been recorded from Pekin. 



Mr. Distant said he had lately had a species of Cicada from Hongkong, 

 which had hitherto been supposed to be confined to Java. 



Mr. W. H. B. Fletcher exhibited a preserved specimen of a variety of the 

 arva of Sphinx ligustri, taken in a wood near Arundel, Sussex. Mr. W. White 

 asked if the larva was normal in its early stage ; he also exhibited drawings 

 of the larvae of this species, and called especial attention to one of a variety 

 that had been exhibited at a previous meeting by Lord Walsingham. 



Mr. F. D. Godman read a long letter from M.r. Herbert Smith, con- 

 taining an account of the Hymenoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, and Coleoptera 

 he had recently collected in St. Vincent, where he was employed under the 

 direction of a Committee of the Royal Society, appointed to investigate the 

 Natural History of the West Indies. A discussion followed, in which Dr. 

 Sharp, Capt. Elwes, Lord Walsingham, and Mr. M'Lachlan took part. 



