6620 



En tomological Society . 



Mr. Westwood had little doubt but the butterflies alluded to were the singular 

 insects figured by Dr. Horsfield in his « Lepidopterous Insects of Java/ Plate II., 

 under the generic name of Sytnetha (Polyommatus Symethus of the ' Encyclopedic 

 Methodique' being the type), and having remarkably developed and thick tarsi. This 

 opinion was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Slainton. 



Mr. Douglas exhibited the following insects, and notes of their economy : — 

 " Ornix Scoticella, with its pupa-case projecting from its puparium, within a leaf 

 of Sorbus aria. 



" Coccyx splendidulana, Guen., with its pupa-case projecting from its puparium, 

 in a piece of the bark of a willow, where I found it in March. Mr. Wilkinson, in his 

 ' British Tortrices,' says the imago of this species 'appears among fir trees but this 

 does not accord with my experience, and in the present instance there is not a fir tree 

 within half a mile of the place where I found the pupa. 



u Raphidia p Last February, when examining, in Richmond Park, the 



rotten pieces of oak branches blown down by the wind, I found, in the centre of two 

 of them, a larva of a Raphidia. What they did there I do not know ; they appeared 

 to have nothing except the wood to eat, but they were very lively. I took them home 

 and put them in a large glass jar, still in the wood ; and there they remained till the 

 6th of May, when I found two perfect insects. Attached firmly by the outstretched 

 feet, was the pupa-skin which I now exhibit; it was in a vertical position, rent on the 

 back where the imago had emerged, and resembled the exuvium of a dragon-fly, such 

 as we constantly see attached to the stems of plants growing in water. The other pupa- 

 skin I could not find. Twenty-five years ago Mr. Waterhouse read a memoir on the 

 transformations of a species of Raphidia, to this Society, and it is published in the first 

 volume of the ' Transactions.' T should not have deemed it wonh while to bring the 

 subject again under your notice, only that my observation of the position of the larva 

 goes to prove his supposition that the habit is not carnivorous ; and, moreover, 

 I thought it might be of interest to show that, in the instances I noticed, the larvae 

 were not immediately beneath the bark of solid wood as his were, but in the centre of 

 rotten branches, so rotten indeed that they crumbled beneath the fingers. Possibly 

 they are not the same species as Mr. Waterhouse's. Percheron says the larvae feed 

 on larvae of Arachnides and Onisci ; certainly mine had no such food after I got them, 

 and as the pupa state lasts, according to Percheron, about fifteen days, mine either 

 fasted two months or fed on the wood. 



" Trinodes hirlus. The larva I exhibited recently, at a meeting of this Society, 

 has, as I expected, produced an example of Trinodes hirtus. The following is a 

 description of the larva : — 



" Length 1£ line. Dirty white; head large, testaceous ; second segment narrow, 

 black ; each segment is narrowly margined with black, and down the back is a row of 

 black spots. The whole larva is densely clothed with black, stout hairs, arising in 

 fascicles ; these hairs are erect on the back, but those along the sides are rather 

 curved ; they are shortest at the head and anus, but the longest are more than half as 

 long as the body. The larva is without the dense anal tufts of hairs which are so 

 conspicuous in the larva of Tiresias serra. 



"The pupa state was assumed about the middle of May, within the skin of the 

 larva, and under the web of the spider in whose company both this species and 

 Tiresias serra live together under the loose bark of old oak trees. The imago appeared 

 on the 3rd of June." 



