Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/479

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September 5, 1877.—Prof. M.A., F.L.S., President, in the chair.

Donations to the Library were announced, and thanks voted to the donors.

Mr. F. Smith exhibited, on behalf of Mr. G.A. James Rothney, a fine collection of Hymenoptera, collected in the neighbourhood of Calcutta during the past season. The majority of the species belonged to the fossorial division; among them were several fine species of Sphegidæ and Bembicidæ. In the collection were several new species of the genus Cerceris, also a few new species of Apidæ, the whole series being in the finest possible condition.

Mr. M'Lachlan exhibited drawings (with details) of the extraordinary insect from Java, described by Wesmael in 1836, under the name of Himanopterus fuscinervis, as pertaining to the Lepidoptera. The insect remains to this day unique in the collection of the Brussels Museum. In 1866 Dr. Hagen transferred Himanopterus to the Neuroptera as a subgenus of Nemoptera. No palpi nor legs existed in the insect when first described, but from the neuration, general form, nature of the clothing, &c., Mr. M'Lachlan is quite certain it has nothing to do with Nemoptera, and is truly lepidopterous, allied to the North Indian insect described and figured by E. Doubleday as Thymara zoida.

Prof. Westwood stated that in 1876 he had also studied the type, and made drawings and agreed as to its position near Thymara.

Mr. M'Lachlan also exhibited leaves of a large species of Acer from trees growing in the grounds of Mons. van Volxen, at Lacken, near Brussels. These trees were many of them fifty feet in height, and almost each leaf had one or more large white blotches on it, being the mines of a small sawfly described by Kaltenbach as Phyllotoma aceris, a species occurring in England on the wild Acer campestre. The insect only first appeared in M. van Volxen's grounds last year, and was now in such extraordinary profusion that the flattened discs formed by the larvæ when full fed made quite a pattering noise as they fell from the trees. Unless the insect should disappear as rapidly as it came, there is every possibility that the combined attacks of the myriads of larvæ may seriously damage the trees.

Prof. Westwood exhibited specimens of two minute hymenopterous insects from Ceylon, closely allied to Mymar pulchellus, a British species.