30 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
throughout the true spirit of the field naturalist. He points out as an 
interesting fact, that away from human habitations wasps act differently 
towards people from those we meet near houses or by the roadside. 
The author thinks that perhaps the love of the wasp for what we call 
bad smells determines its best sphere of usefulness. The “ wet heap- 
rubbish, the emptying drain, the oozing cesspool, are evils that cry aloud 
for redress, and their cries are all the louder till vegetation comes to 
clothe them. On sewage-laden rivers, the herbage covers much that is 
unsightly, and lessens the effect of the hurtful odour. If it is better to 
have such places clothed with a mantle of green, and if we know that the 
wasp is a willing worker among the flowers that graciously cover places 
so uninviting, we cannot well fix the limit to the work it is doing, both 
openly and out of sight.” 
Remarkable Use of Ants.* — Mr. R. M. Middleton jun. records a re- 
markable use of ants in Asia Minor. He has made the acquaintance of 
a Greek gentleman who fell from his horse in Smyrna six years ago, and 
received a severe but clear cut on the forehead. In accordance with the 
custom of the country, he went to a Greek barber to have the wound 
dressed, and the barber employed at least ten living ants to bite the sides 
together. Pressing together the margins of the cut, which was rather 
more than an inch long, with the fingers of the left hand, he applied the 
insect by means of a pair of forceps held in the right hand. The man- 
dibles of the ant were widely opened for self-defence, and as the insect 
was carefully brought near to the wound, it seized upon the raised 
surface, penetrated the skin on both sides, and remained tenaciously fixed 
while the barber severed the head of the ant from the thorax, and so left 
the mandibles grasping the wound. These were left in position for 
three days, when the cut was healed and the heads removed. It is not 
yet certain what the species used is. The author refers to some obser- 
vations on the subject by Sir John Lubbock in his well-known work on 
ants, bees, and wasps. 
Thoracic Glands in Larvae of Trichoptera.f — Prof. G. Gilson gives 
an account of segmentally disposed glands in these insects. He comes 
to the conclusion that in larval Trichoptera each of the thoracic segments 
may be provided with more or less complex glandular organs, more 
nearly representing nephridia than the coxal glands of Annelids and 
Peripatus, and he carries this further by saying that in the Hexapoda re- 
mains of segmentally glandular organs, be they coxal or nephridial, are 
now known for the whole length of the body, from the mandibular to 
the posterior abdominal segments. 
Larval Gills of Odonata. * — Prof. G. Gilson and M. J. Sadones state 
the results of their investigations on the larval gills of the Odonata in 
the following terms : — 
(1) The rectal tracheal gills of larval Odonata are prevented from 
adhering to one another by the presence of three conical pillars. 
(2) The main tracheal tubes alone are lodged between the two that 
form the gill. The terminal loops, i.e. the functional part of the system, 
run through the protoplasm of the subcuticular layer. 
* Journ. Linn. Soc. Lend., xxv. (1896) pp. 405-6, 
t Tom. cl fc. , pp. 407-12 (2 figs.). 
