PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 
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they made no attempt to swim, which proved to him that Ganin’s speci- 
men coaid not he the same as Sir John Lubbock’s. He also noticed that 
Haliday stated in his description that his specimen had a keeled thorax, 
which Ganin’s Anagrus certainly had not ; and when he exhibited a 
specimen which he had recently found, at the soiree of the Royal Society, 
it was recognised as being the same as Haliday’s Cataphractus , dis- 
covered in 1846. Another form, discovered also by Sir John Lubbock 
in 1862, was named by him Prestwichia ; this was a female, and turned 
out to be, not a Mymarid, but an aquatic Hymenopter which used its 
legs for swimming. The male of this remained undiscovered until last 
year, when he had himself the good fortune to find it. He urged all 
who took any interest in this branch of natural history to search 
for these Mymaridae. They were far more common than might be 
generally supposed, and he did not think there would be a window of a 
house on which they could not be found in summer-time ; he had him- 
self found not less than 600 on the window panes of a house at Woking, 
but amongst all these he was only able to find two males ; and this 
naturally suggested the question, where do all the males get to ? Last 
year he collected a large number of the eggs of the Alder fly, and from 
these he bred about 700 parasites, and he got ten broods in the course 
of the season, as it took exactly a fortnight for them to go all through their 
changes. Next month these insects would begin to come out, and should 
therefore be looked for. The males were all apterous, and they emerged 
from the egg first ; they then watched for the emergence of the females, 
and as soon as these appeared copulation took place, the female flew 
away, and the life of the male was probably a very short one. The 
genus Litus was very peculiar, and in appearance was very much like a 
flea ; but though he had carefully watched for the male, it had up to the 
present time remained undiscovered. Out of the 172 specimens in 
Haliday’s collection, he found more than one-half were wrongly named, 
or had been placed in the wrong genus ; they were all very much mixed, 
and therefore wanted very careful examination. In conclusion, he wished 
to thank the Fellows of the Society for listening so patiently to his 
rather rambling remarks about this little known family ; he had never 
before had the opportunity of showing at the same time representatives 
of the entire family, and he tendered his sincere thanks to the Society 
for rendering it possible for him to do so. 
The President thought that all who were present would concur in 
passing a very hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Enock for bringing this 
beautiful collection of the Mymaridse before them, and also for the very 
interesting remarks which he had made in the course of his description. 
Dr. Dallinger said it was not usual for a vote of thanks to be 
seconded which had been moved from the chair, but on that occasion he 
thought they might depart from this custom. He felt sure they had all 
been interested and instructed by what Mr. Enock had described and 
shown them, and the subject had proved to be just one of those which 
showed how very much there was to be done in many directions by 
microscopists, if only they addressed themselves to them, and so dis- 
covered how to find the large amount of work that remained to be done 
in apparently exhausted fields. Mr. Enock had certainly shown them 
that evening how and where to find one. 
