Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/417

Rh indeed, I saw very daring acts done. I venture to suggest to your readers that a subscription to help these men should be made, and I shall be very happy to receive for them any money which may be forwarded to me for the purpose. Many of these fishermen have enabled me to bring to the notice of naturalists some of the rarer fishes and Crustacea found off the coast of Cornwall. So far as I can ascertain, the total loss sustained by the men is about £30.— (Penzance).

August 7, 1878.— Esq., F.L.S., F.Z.S., President, in the chair.

A communication was read from Mr. M'Lachlan, to the effect that, in the writer's opinion, the larva referred to by Prof. Westwood, at the last meeting of the Society, as boring in the stems of the potato, was in all probability that of a Noctua, Gortyna flavago, polyphagous in the stems of a variety of herbaceous plants — foxgloves, thistles, burdock, &c.

Mr. S. Stevens exhibited some living specimens of Teretrius picipes, found on oak palings at Upper Norwood— parasitic on Lyctus oblongus — running in and out of the burrows during the hot sunshine; also specimens of Pachnobia alpina, male and female, bred by Mr. Clark, who found the pupæ under Vaccinium on the highest parts of the mountains above Rannoch, N.B.

Mr. Enock exhibited some remarkable varieties of British Lepidoptera, recently described and figured elsewhere.

Mr. Rutherford stated that he had been successful in rearing certain larva? associated with the cocoons of a moth allied to Anaphe panda, exhibited at a previous meeting. They proved to be those of an ichneumon ascertained by Mr. F. Smith to be Cryptus formosus, Brulle, parasitical also on Anaphe reticulata. A number of specimens of the insect, both preserved and alive, were exhibited.

Mr. Rutherford also exhibited a series of colour-varieties of an African butterfly, viz. Aterica Meleagris, Cram., as illustrative of the principle of protective assimilation. He remarked that all the species belonging to the genus Aterica were shade-living and extremely local in their habits, with the solitary exception of Meleagris, which he had never found in shady places, but always in bright sunshine. He had never observed it settle on leaves, but always on the ground, and with closed wings, the under side of which have such a resemblance to the colour of the soil that he had always experienced the greatest difficulty in detecting the butterfly when at rest.