THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 29 
that one stimulus will bring about the same effect that all 
the different stimuli did previously, and this is the dawn 
of psychic phenomena. 
Further, we have seen that the fertilisation of the egg 
may be brought about by purely chemical means, and here 
any hereditary characters must be carried by the egg. 
But the egg and the spermatozoon are both of a col- 
loidal nature, and since we have seen that the character 
of colloidal substances depends in the simple experiments 
quoted upon their previous history, it is not difficult to 
conceive that colloidal substances so complex as those of 
the egg and the spermatozoon, with a history in each ani- 
mal of so many thousands of years behind them, should 
have become influenced and modified by the various 
stimuli to which, in the course of that time, they have 
been subjected, and hence reproduce faithfully, except 
for those slight variations which make natural selection 
possible, those animals from whose bodies they have arisen. 
Thus, it seems to me, from these considerations, that in 
colloidal properties, we have a pregnant suggestion as to 
the basis of heredity. 
NOTES ON PSYCHOPSIS NHWMANI. 
By L. Gallard. 
This insect belongs to the Order Neuroptera, Family 
Hemergbiidae. The parent form measures about 114 to 
184 inches across the wings when outspread. These are 
broad and rounded, and make the insect appear in shape 
more like a butterfly. The colour is light buff, tinged 
with pink. In the fore wing we have a triple nervure, 
starting from the body and traversing the wing about one- 
eighth of an inch from the front margin, until it gets a 
little over two-thirds of its length, where it turns down- 
wards and terminates. Another longitudinal nervure tra- 
verses the hind margin of the wing at about one-sixteenth 
of an inch from the edge. The space between these two 
nervures is filled up by radiating veins, which start from 
the frontal nervure and run backward to the hind mar- 
gin of the wing; the space between these and the margin 
of the wing is filled with transverse veins. There ig a 
cross vein which runs from one nervure to the other, about, 
three-eighths of the way from the base of the wing, and 
another which runs around the wing about half-way from 
the main nervure to the margin, and from this to the 
