5720 Insects. 



slightly interrupted with fuscous scales ; cilia yellowish white ; posterior wings pale 

 gray. 



From the Nepticula cocoons collected last autumn I have bred some hundreds of 

 these little gems : Septembrella and subbimaculella emerged in swarms; apple, oak, 

 hornbeam and hawthorn cocoons produced their tenants in a satisfactory manner ; 

 with precisely the same treatment few have emerged from rose, hazel, sloe, birch, 

 elm and mountain ash. Regiella made its appearance this morning from haw- 

 thorn. At the close of the season I will send to the 'Zoologist' a list of the species 

 bred. 



Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea. From larvse feeding in this plant I have bred Coleophora 

 vilisella (the males are very like orbitella), Euehromia flammeana, Anchylopera 

 myrtillana and Lithocolletis vacciniella. In the course of a few days 1 expect to see 

 Nepticula Weaveri, Coccyx ustomaculana and two species of Coleophora ; the latter 

 appear to be very scarce, — I met with but two cases of each. 



Lithocolletis Klemannella. I bred two from alder; and Ornix Scoticella from 

 mountain ash. During the last few days I have taken a few specimens of Lampronia 

 luzella and rubiella flying in the afternoon amongst raspberry bushes. — Id. 



The Tzetze of Africa identified with CEstrus Bovis. — A considerable degree 

 of uncertainty and even misapprehension appears to prevail about the fly that 

 Dr. Livingstone so interestingly describes as annoying the cattle in Africa, and which 

 he designates the tzetzes, its African appellation. Although introduced as a new 

 species, I beg to observe that it is a very old one under a new name, — the fly so 

 feelingly described by Moses of old as infesting the cattle of Egypt, and by Isaiah, 

 the prophet, as being very troublesome in his day ; and after these the heathen writers 

 and poets, especially of Rome, do not fail to notice it, — " Est lucos Silari cirua," &c. 

 The fly itself, the cause of this trouble, has been exceedingly scarce; so much so that 

 Valisneri, an Italian writer on the subject, had never seen but a mutilated specimen 

 of it, cor had Reaumur, a French writer, and Linneus himself had never seen one, 

 and, throughout all the editions of the ' Systema Naturae,' he has, by a strange over- 

 sight, given a horse-bot for it. It has been my good fortune to get no less than five 

 specimens of this fly ; two I obtained when living at Moulsey, near Hampton Court, 

 by fixing a pitch-plaister on the loins of two cows, on Moulsey Common, — the plaister 

 having a hole in the centre, in which was fixed a gauze-pouch, into which the larva 

 fell on making its exit from the cow's back : in this way I obtained two full-grown 

 grubs, which, put into a garden-pot of earth, brought me two perfect and lively flies; 

 one flew out of a window while I was looking at it, the other was drawn by Sydenham 

 Edwards for representation in the third volume of the Linnean Society's 'Trans- 

 actions : ' a third I caught in a journey in Savoy, on Mont Blanc, with the ingenious 

 Peter Huber, whose labours among the bees and ants have lately so eminently dis- 

 tinguished him ; it was flying about some cow-dung, and on seeing it my agitation to 

 secure it was so great that Huber said, "Let me try," and with a sweep of his hand 

 he caught it; I gave this specimen, on my return from Switzerland through Germany, 

 to the celebrated Professor Daniel Schreber, of Erlang, the pupil and friend of Linneus, 

 till then had never seen a specimen of it: a fourth I saw, among a number of other 

 insects, in a shop-window in Paris, and, purchasing it for a franc, gave it to young 

 Wm. MacLeay, a devoted naturalist. Now this African tzetze, I am led to believe, is 

 the real patronymic of the French Estre, made more pronounceable by introducing 

 more vowels and fewer consonants, and then from it we get the Latin CEstrus and the 



