Entomological Society. 



8017 



Pseudogynous Specimen of Liparis dispar. 



Mr. Stainton, on behalf of Mr. Newman, exhibited a pseudogynous specimen of 

 Liparis dispar, and read the following notes thereon by Mr. Newman : — 



"At page cxl. of the Appendix to the ' Zoologist' for 1851 I have attempted to 

 differentiate four classes of phenomena usually comprehended and confounded under 

 the word ' hermaphrodite :' one of these phenomena I have called Pseudogynism, that 

 is, falsely or imperfectly female. At that time T believed, and stiil believe, the pheno- 

 menon of pseudogynism chiefly confined to endosteate animals, and especially to the 

 ox tribe, in which they are familiarly known as free martins. I have now the plea- 

 sure of submitting to your notice a pseudogynous specimen of Liparis dispar, being 

 the first instance I have seen of pseudogynism among insects, or indeed among ex- 

 osteate animals. The sexual characters are most singularly blended ; the antennae 

 are those of a male; the outline of the wings is exactly as in a female ; the spotted 

 cilia, so conspicuous in the fore wings, is a female character ; the termination of the 

 abdomen is female, and the sexual organs are so completely female that the specimen 

 now exhibited has been uuited for three hours -with a male of the same species ; but, 

 although it lived for three days after the intercourse had taken place, no eggs were 

 laid, and the abdomen is hollow, never having contained eggs. I am iudebted to 

 Mr. Parke, of Stanway Old Hall, near Halifax, for the opportunity of exhibiting this 

 singular and at present unique illustration of aberration from the usual order of 

 Nature." 



Dr. Wallace remarked that the circumstance of a female moth, in which no eggs 

 had ever been developed, having nevertheless united in copulation with a male, was 

 peculiarly interesting : he had frequently found that insects, whose appearance had 

 been artificially forced by heat or otherwise, had their ovaries undeveloped ; but in 

 such cases he had never observed copulation to take place. 



Orgyia Erica, Sfc. 



Mr. Stainton exhibited a female of Orgyia Ericse, a species not yet found in this 

 country, though possibly it might be expected on heaths in the South of England, 

 being not uncommon in the North of Germany and Belgium. He called attention to 

 the shortness of the legs, and remarked that his attention had been attracted to the 

 insect by a brief notice in the last volume of the ' Annales de la Sociele Entomolo- 

 gique Beige,' that this female did not quit the cocoon. It was well known that the 

 female of Orgyia antiqua came out of iis cocoon, and that the female of O. Ericae 

 should remain inside its cocoon seemed so extraordinary that he had been led 

 to refer to what had been observed respecting other females of this genus, and rather ^ 

 to his surprise it had transpired that the non-exclusion from the cocoon of the female 

 Orgyia was the rule. The earliest notice had appeared in the * Annales de la Sociele 

 Entomologique de France' in 1832, where Rambur had described O. rupestris, and 

 had remarked that the female never came out of the cocoon, but had intercourse with 

 the male through a hole at one end of the cocoon, and then deposited its eggs in the 

 interior of the cocoon. In the ' Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France,' in 

 1834, the Count de Saporta had made a similar observation with regard to O. trigo- 

 tephros, and had described very graphically the result of the laying of eggs by the 

 female, remarking that she seemed really to dissolve into eggs, for that after the eggs 

 were all laid there was nothing of the female left, for her remains were so small as to 

 VOL. XX. 2 c 



