Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/481

Rh one from the Upper Godaveri district—in which he had first observed stridulating organs had these organs more highly developed than in the one experimented upon at Bombay, and must stridulate far more loudly, for by artificially rubbing the parts together in a dead alcoholic specimen he could produce a sound almost as loud as, and very closely similar to, that made by briskly and continuously drawing the tip of the index-finger backwards and forwards, in a direction transverse to its coarse ridges, over the ends of the teeth of a very fine-toothed comb. The apparatus, which, as in the Mygale, is developed on each side of the body, was situated—the scraper upon the flat outer face of the basal joint of the palp-fingers; the rasp on the equally flat and produced inner face of the corresponding joint of the first pair of legs. On separating these appendages from one another, a slightly raised and well-defined large oval area of lighter coloration than the surrounding chitine was to be seen at the very base of the basal joint of each; these arege constituted respectively the scraper and the rasp; the former was tolerably thickly but regularly beset with stout, conical, sharp spinules curved like a tiger's canine, only more towards the points, some of which terminate in a long limp hair; the latter crowdedly studded with minute tubercles shaped like the tops of mushrooms. He had met with no stridulating organs in this position in any scorpions besides S. Afer and its allies; but in searching for them in other groups he had come to the conclusion that the very peculiar armature of the trenchant edges of the palp-fingers in all the Androctonoidæ, and in some at any rate of the Pandinoidæ (no Telegonoidæ nor Vejovoidæ had yet been examined), was nothing but a modification for the same purpose, for the movable finger of this pair of appendages when in the closest relation of apposition to its immovable fellow could most easily be made to grate upon it from side to side so as to produce a most distinct crepitating sound; but wiieu separated from it ever so little appeared to be incapable of the slightest lateral movement. It was his intention on his return to India to endeavour to determine this question, as well as many others relative to the species in which the presence of sound-producing apparatus had now been demonstrated by careful observation and experiment upon living animals.

Mr. Mason finally handed to Prof. Westwood for identification the larva of some homopterous insect with what appeared to be a lepidopterous casebearing larva attached to its last segment by a tough semi-transparent cord. The specimens were from Bangalore.

Mr. Wormald exhibited, on behalf of Mr. Pryer, a small collection of Chinese Lepidoptera.

Mr. G.C. Champion exhibited some rare beetles from Aviemore, Inverness-shire; among them was Pachyta sex-maculata, a Longicorn new to Britain.