5646 Zoological Society. 



Grooves in the Eyes of certain Coleoptera. 



Mr. Wollaston called attention to the existence of grooves in the eyes of certain 

 Coleoptera, adducing as an illustration the genus Trixagus (or Throscus of British 

 cabinets), in which four out of five species with which he was acquainted possessed 

 this structure, more or less developed, and which he had not seen anywhere alluded 

 to. He stated that the impression was usually of a somewhat curved form, and ex- 

 tended, from the edge nearest to the insertion of the antenna?, across the centre of the 

 eye, but that it seldom reached the opposite margin, becoming gradually evanescent 

 as it approached it ; that in the common T. dennestoides it was continued but little 

 more than half-way across, in the elateroides of Heer it occupied at least two-thirds 

 of the entire distance, whilst in the gracilis of his ' InsectaMaderensia' it very nearly 

 touched the opposite part of the circumference. The antennae of Trixagus being 

 implanted very near to the inner margin of the eye, he believed that this sulcus 

 had reference to the lodgment of those organs when the insect was in a state of 

 partial activity, and had removed them from out of the grooves of its anteriorly pro- 

 duced prosternura, — an hypothesis which was rendered the more probable since the 

 only species in which he had as yet remarked the impression to be totally absent was 

 one from Madeira (which he had lately described under the name of integer), in which 

 the antenna? are inserted further from the eye than in the normal members of the 

 group, and in which, consequently, any such ocular receptacles would be superfluous. 



Mr. Tapping communicated some notes by Mr. Fedarb, of Dover, on Acari found 

 in a photographic portrait-case, alluded to by that gentleman at a former Meeting of 

 the Society ; and also a notice, by the same, of the ravages committed by a species of 

 Atropos on the Barbadoes nut, accompanied by drawings of the insects. — E. S. 



Zoological Society. 

 May 12, 1857.— Dr. Gray, F.R.S., in the chair. 



Exhibitions. 



Mr. Tegetmeir exhibited to the Meeting a very large adult cranium of the great 

 chimpanzee {Troglodytes Gorilla). This specimen, which was brought from the Ga- 

 boon by Captain Simmonds, is larger than any of the casts in the College of Surgeons, 

 or the cranium belonging to Dr. Savage, of America, which was described by Profes- 

 sor Owen and figured in the ' Transactions ' of the Society, and appears to be the most 

 mature specimen known. 



Mr. Sclater exhibited specimens of two undescribed species of the Tyrannine genus 

 Todirostrum, from a collection received by Sir William Jardine from the Rio Napo, 

 and proposed to call them T. calopterum and T. capitale ; also two specimens of an 

 apparently hitherto unnoticed bird of the same genus, from his own collection, which 

 he characterized under the name of T. exile ; the latter species was from New Granada. 

 Mr. Sclater also called the attention of the Society to specimens of the N. American 

 Parus atricapillus and Parus meridionalis from S. Mexico, and pointed out the dis- 

 tinguishing characters of these two closely allied species. 



