VITALITY. 
651 
actions under the name of vespa crinita, which he regarded 
as a new species of hairy wasp, not being aware that it was 
a sphseria. 
Several kinds of moths, both English and foreign, especi- 
ally from the Brazils, are found thus attacked, also ants 
and curculionidge from St. VincenPs, and the papa of the 
cicada, splicer id sobolifera. 
At the Bristol Association for the Cultivation of Science, 
held in August, 1836, a paper was read by J. B. Yates, 
Esq., on the vegetating wasp in the West Indies, in which 
the author was likewise of opinion that the vegetating process 
commenced during the life of the insect ; and, certainly, a 
careful examination of these singular caterpillars favors the 
hypothesis. If this should be the case, it is an instance of 
a retrograde step in nature, when the insect, instead of 
rising to the higher order of the butterfly, and soaring to 
the skies, sinks into a plant, and remains attached to the 
soil in which it has buried itself. 
Vitality. 
The vitality of the unio is extraordinary ; at Liverpool, in 
New South Wales, Colonel Phelps, a great lover of nature, 
brought me several live unios, which he said were taken 
out of a dry bank many feet above the level of the water 
which had never reached the spot in the memory of the 
oldest settler ; as I appeared rather incredulous, it was 
proposed that we should take a walk together to the place 
from whence they were taken. 
The country about Liverpool is a dead flat, and in the part 
we visited was intersected by a tolerably deep ravine or water- 
course, which in dry weather is merely a chain of ponds, and 
it is rarely in a climate like that of Australia there is ever 
sufficient rain to cause a running stream ; in the bank, about 
two feet below the level of the surrounding country, on which 
my friend^s house stood, he pointed out a bed of mussel 
shells, which seemed to have been deposited there by some 
