1908] 
Proceedings. 
3 
Milwaukee, Nov. 21, 1907. 
Regular monthly meeting- of the Society. 
President Teller in the chair and about sixty persons present. 
Dr. Geo. W. Peckham spoke on "Kecent Additions to Our Knowl- 
edge of the Habits of Wasps." The speaker described the wonderful 
stinging instincts of certain wasps and then showed the advancing steps 
in the evolution of such instincts as illustrated by living species in 
different families. 
He was followed by Dr. S. Graenicher, who discussed the habits 
of bees from the standpoint of recent discoveries. He dealt particu- 
larly with the locality and direction senses so frequently attributed 
to certain Hymenoptera. The recent concensus of opinion seems to 
be that these instincts are largely built upon individual experience and 
visual memory of objects, whose position has to be learned by the 
bees. 
The meeting then adjourned. 
Milwaukee, Dec. 12, 1907. 
Meeting of the combined Sections. 
President Teller in the chair and twelve members present. 
The minutes of the last Section meeting were read and approved. 
Dr. S. Graenicher spoke on "Adaptational Structures in Flower- 
Visiting Coleoptera." He referred briefly to the great range of varia- 
tion among the different orders of insects with reference to the extent 
to which some of their members are adapted to obtain nectar from 
flowers. He described in detail the elongation of the anterior parts 
of the body in the genus Leptura and its allies and showed how these 
were adaptations to visiting flowers, their extent being correlated 
with the habits of the different genera. He also exhibited a number 
of meloid beetles belonging to the genus Nemognatha and showed how 
their variously elongated mouthparts adapted them to different 
flowers. The group is of neotropical distribution, but a single species 
occurs as far north as Milwaukee, where it frequents the flowers of 
Rudbeckia, which has a tube length exactly equal to the length of the 
beetle's mouthparts. 
Questioned by Dr. Graenicher, Mr. Brues stated that he had col- 
lected one of the Texan species of Neinognatha on the flowers of 
another composite plant belonging to the genus Gaillardia. 
