534 The American Naturalist. [June, 
of Lagoide. This on the whole seems to us to be the most judicious 
course to pursue. At all events the insect is plainly enongh an ancient 
ancestral or generalized form. It is, so to speak, a primitive Cochlio- 
podid with larval abdominal legs. It lays eggs like those of Limacodes, 
ete. ; its head in the larval state is concealed from above by the pro- 
thoracic hood ; its larval armature is more of the Cochliopodid type 
than Liparid; so are the pupal characters and the nature of the 
cocoon; and the shape of the important parts of the head and the 
essential features of the venation are overwhelmingly Cochliopodid. 
Under these circumstances we feel justified in regarding Lagoa as a 
most interesting ancestral form, and as affording arguments for con- 
sidering the Bombyces, as a whole, as a generalized and ancestral group, 
and epitomizing the other higher Lepidopterous families somewhat as 
Marsupials do the placental orders of mammals.” 
In a note Dr. Packard announces his recent discovery that Lagoa is 
preoccupied by Megalopyge of Hübner, and Lagoide by Megalopyg- 
idee of Berg. 
Miss Ormerod’s Report.—Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod’s seven- 
teenth report on the injurious insects of England which has lately ap- 
peared forms a volume of 152 pages treating of a great variety of in- 
sect pests. There are a number of illustrations, several being new. 
The most remarkable insect appearance of last season was the so-called 
plague of wasps, already mentioned in the NATURALIST. Concerning 
this Miss Ormerod writes: “The enormous excess of wasp presence over 
the average was in many places nothing short of a calamity, inflicting 
pain, and to some degree danger to ourselves, and to horses exposed to 
sudden attack, and great loss to fruit-growers. Within our houses in 
many cases the wasps swarmed to such a degree and especially at meal 
times as to make their presence on the food a real trouble; the agri- 
cultural or garden laborers were severely stung where working on 
crops to which the wasps had been attracted by the presence of aph- 
ides, or on fruit stocks where budding was going forward. Also pain, 
risk and delay in farm work were caused by fierce onslaughts of wasps 
from nests turned up in plowing. Great losses were caused by. the 
quantity of fruit entirely ruined up to almost wholesale destruction in 
the grounds of large fruit growers, and to this must added the losses to 
shop owners dealing in such commodities as find favor in the eyes of 
wasps for their own consumption, or thievish abstraction for food of 
the coming on generation still in maggot condition, to be counted by 
hundreds, in each of the vast number of nests which were the head- 
quarters of the marauding and troublesome pests.” 
