Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/464

440 Mr. Rutherford exhibited, and communicated a description of, a new species of Goliath beetle, from Mount Camaroons, allied to Ceratorrhina Sayi, Westw. He also exhibited a specimen of a West African butterfly, Romaleosoma Ruspina, Hew., nearly a third of the wings of which, on both surfaces, along their outer margin, and beginning a little below the apical angle of the primaries, were entirely destitute of scales, with the exception of the nervures, which were sparsely covered with them. The symmetry of the transparent portion of the naked wings seemed, he thought, to preclude the idea that the butterfly had been partly denuded of its scales, either intentionally or by accident ; and he inclined to the conclusion that the appearance it presented was due to some abnormal physiological condition occurring either in the larva or chrysalis.

Mr. G.C. Champion exhibited specimens of Amara infima, from Chobham, Surrey, this rare insect not having been recorded since 1857, when Dawson first added it to the list of British Coleoptera.

Mr. W.A. Forbes exhibited a collection of insects from Switzerland, taken at the latter end of June in a valley in the neighbourhood of Chamouni, at an elevation of 5000 or 6000 feet.

Mr. J. Wood-Mason read a note "On a Saltatorial Mantis," and exhibited a specimen of the insect, which had been captured on the banks of the Tagus. He also read notes "On the hatching period of Mantidæ in Eastern Bengal," and "On the presence of Stridulating Apparatus in certain Mantidæ," this being the first discovery of such an organ in that family. The author exhibited, in illustration of the last note, a large Mantis, showing the serrated fore margin of the tegmina by means of which the stridulation is effected.

Mr. Wood-Mason also stated that it might interest the members of the Society to hear that in the course of his anatomical work he had discovered a remarkable case of viviparity in the Orthoptera, in a large cockroach belonging to the genus Panesthia, the species of which inhabited the tropical forests of Southern Asia and of Australia, where they lived in the rotten wood of fallen trees. The species in question was P. Javanica, from the abdominal brood-pouch of the female of which he had extracted young white specimens of 0-5 mm. in length, and these, from their being already provided with legs, antennae, black eyes, and the full number of already hard-tipped gnathites, as well as from their size, he judged were just on the point of birth when the mother was throwu into the alcohol. He further suggested that the curious and as yet unexplained habit evinced by several European species of Blattidæ of carrying their egg-capsules about with them for a week, or even for so long a period as a fortnight, before depositing them, might possibly be explicable as the retention of a vestige of a lost viviparousuess. — Hon. Sec.