Trinadad, is described in Nature. These queer creatures catch fish at night in a manner not very clearly made out.—Dr. Kobelt, the malacologist, who has visited North Africa and Spain to study the mollusks of the two countries reports, says Nature, that it may be safely assumed that the connection was not confined to the Straits of Gibraltar, but extended at least as far as the meridian of Oran and Cartagena.— M. Kunstler has found a flagellate Infusorian very much like Noctiluca living in fresh water. It appears that 38 naturalists worked at the Roscoff sea-side laboratory during 1881 against 27 in 1880. The number of foreigners is eight. The French dredging expedition, in Le Travailleur, under the direction of A. Milne Edwards, has published a preliminary report. Many crustaceans, and star-fish, such as Brisinga, and other animals were found, these being Atlantic forms new to the Mediterranean. "In general the Mediterranean is not to be thought a distinct geological province; its inhabitants have probably come from the ocean, and their development and reproduction have been more active than in their place of origin. Some have been slightly modified. The more we get to know of oceanic productions off the coast of Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and Senegal, the more do differences from Mediterranean animals disappear."(Nature.)—A species of fluke (Distomum cirrigerum) have been found by G. Zaddach in the crayfish, where they occur as blackish spots on the testes, and in greater numbers in the muscles of the hinder part of the abdomen. The author, says the Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, comes to the somewhat remarkable conclusion that in Distomum isostomum, another fluke of the crayfish, the sexually mature forms succeed one another.

ENTOMOLOGY.1

ON SOME CURIOUS METHODS OF PUPATION AMONG THE CHALCIDIDE. (Concluded from the Fanuary number.)-The mines of Lithocolletis fitchella Clem., at Washington, contain oftentimes a most interesting object, which I have never yet seen described. Imagine a short, slender chain of small, closely welded brown dipterous puparia and you will have the exact appearance. Such a chain I have often found in the center of a mine of the Lithocolletis, supported by the silken threads which the larva of the latter always spins prior to pupation. The number of individuals in a chain is always quite constant, never varying more than from ten to thirteen, and not a trace of any other occupant of the mine is to be seen, no matter how careful the examination may be.

Finding many specimens in the course of a winter I racked my brains for a long time, trying to find out what they were. I had settled in my mind that they were dipterous, though I knew of This department is edited by PROF. C. V. RILEY, Washington, D. C., to whom communications, books for notice, etc., should be sent.

no insect of that order having such habits. I thought of the gregarious habits of Sciara, and wondered if I had not found some new form which carried the larval custom on into the pupa state. My friends were equally puzzled with myself-none had ever seen such an object before.

One day I found that a number of small Chalcids had issued from one of the chains. This, however, did not shake my belief as I considered the Chalcids as simply parasites upon the original makers of the chain, and I waited with impatience for the real owner. However, more and more of the Chalcids issued, until at last every specimen I had collected, with the exception of those put away in alcohol, had excluded ten or a dozen of the parasites, and I had made up mind that I should have to wait till the next season before solving the problem, the idea never striking me that I had the solution right before my eyes.

. The next spring I bred from a mine of Gelechia pinifolia Cham., a few specimens of a closely allied Chalcid and, upon opening the mine from which they had issued, I found one of the familiar chains, in which, however, the individual "puparia" seemed more fused together, and an examination with a Tolles 4th showed a delicate membrane surrounding them all. This membrane the compound microscope showed to be the true skin of the Gelechia larva, but so stretched as to leave the sutures perfectly indistinguishable and to be recognizable only from the spiracles and anal hairs. Now going back to my oak chains I found, of course, the same to be the case; but the skin of the Lithocolletis larva had shrunken down into the crevices so tightly and its surface was so smooth that the resemblance to a string of puparia was perfect.

Later I had the opportunity of examining a larva of Anarsia lineatella Zeller, parasited by an allied species, and the same appearance resulted, greatly modified, however, by the larger size of the host and the greater thickness of its skin. I remember seeing somewhere a statement by Dr. Lintner, to the effect that he had bred a very interesting parasite from this Anarsia, and I hazard a guess that this was the species. I saw at once from this last larva that the appearance which had puzzled me so was after all only a modification of a phenomenon often met with in larger larvæ, the minute size of the Lithocolletis larva and the extreme delicacy of its last skin combining to produce the curious effect.

A somewhat similar appearance, caused by an allied parasite in the rather large larva of Gelechia galla-solidaginis, is described by Professor Riley in his First Missouri Report. He calls the parasite popularly "the Inflating Chalcis," and figures the parasited larva at Fig. 5, Plate 2.

Moreover, many attempts which were made last season to carry through the larva of Plusia brassica were frustrated by a congeneric parasite with similar habits. The Plusia larva, up to the time of commencing to spin, appeared quite healthy, although perhaps a

little sluggish. Then suddenly its torpor increased, and through the semi-transparent skin were seen hundreds of small white parasitic larvæ. In two days at the most the host was dead, having perhaps partially finished its cocoon, while its entire body was completely packed with the parasitic larvæ or pupæ, each surrounded by a cocoon-like cell. A cross section of the host at this stage showed a regular honeycombed structure. After remaining in the pupa state not longer than twenty days the Chalcids commenced to emerge by the hundreds. My friend, Mr. Pergande, took the trouble to count the parasites which actually issued from one Plusia larva, and, to our utter astonishment, the number reached 2528!

An interesting problem now presents itself as to the nature of the cocoon-like cell surrounding each Chalcid pupa in all these different hosts, from Lithocolletis up to Plusia. In the first place it is no silken cocoon, as is readily shown by the microscopic structure. Neither is it a membrane secreted from the general surface of the Chalcid's body, for but a single wall exists between two adjoining pupæ. For the same reason it is not the loosened last larval skin of the parasite. But one hypothesis remains, and that is that it is a morbid or adventitious tissue of the host, and this the histological structure of the cell-wall seems to show, as it is hyaline with a few simple connective tissue fibers running through it. Serious objections can also be brought up against this conclusion; but it is a point which it will be difficult to absolutely settle without closely watching the actual process of formation.

To return to our Lithocolletis parasite. I find the following note in Westwood, showing how even he was puzzled by what seems to have been a very similar object :

"De Geer has figured a minute black species with dirty white legs, which he reared from minute cocoons attached together side by side, found in the burrow of the larva of one of the pear leaf miners. The figure has somewhat the air of an Encyrtus; but the pupæ are naked in that genus. Can it be a Platygaster? or is it one of the Eulophides as the antennæ would seem to imply ?" (Introduction, Vol. II, p. 170, foot-note.)

The italics are mine and the clause is emphasized from the fact that all the species to which I have referred above belong to the Encyrtid genus Copidosoma, of Ratzeburg, which, at the time Westwood wrote, was still included with Encyrtus. Westwood's mistake was in considering the cocoon-like objects as really cocoons, and this led him astray in his determination.-L. 0. Howard.

NEW INSECTS INJURIOUS TO AGRICULTURE.-Almost every year the appearance of some insect or insects injurious to agriculture, but previously unknown in an injurious capacity, has to be reAbstract of a paper read at the Cincinnati meeting of the A. A. A. S., by C. V Riley.

corded. The present year (1881) has afforded several striking examples, as Crambus vulgivagellus, which has seriously injured pastures, and Phytonomus punctatus, which has proved destructive to clover in the State of New York.

A new Pyralid has also very generally ravaged the corn plants in the Southern States. These new destructive species may either be (1), recently introduced species from some foreign country; (2), native species hitherto unobserved, or unrecorded, and new in the sense of not being described; (3), native species well known to entomologists, but not previously recorded as injurious.

The author argues that in the two last categories, more particularly, we frequently have to deal with newly acquired habits, and in the second category with newly acquired characters that in many cases systematists would consider of specific value. In short, he believes, that certain individuals of a species that has hitherto fed in obscurity on some wild plant may take to feeding on a cultivated plant, and with the change of habit undergo in the course of a few years sufficient change in character to be counted a new species. Increasing and spreading at the rapid rate which the prolificacy of most insects permits, the species finally becomes a pest and necessarily attracts the attention of the farmer. The presumption is that it could not at any previous time have done similar injury without attracting similar attention; in fact, that the habit is newly acquired. The author reasons that just as variation in plant life is often sudden, as in the "sport," and that new characters which may be perpetuated are thus created, so in insects there are comparatively sudden changes, which, under favoring conditions, are perpetuated. In this way characters which most systematists would consider as specific, originate within periods that are very brief compared to those which evolutionists believe to be necessary for the differentiation of specific forms among the higher animals.

NEW ENTOMOLOGICAL PERIODICALS.-We are in receipt of a circular from M. Constant Vanden Branden, Rue de la Madeleine, 69, Bruxelles, Belgium, announcing the monthly publication, beginning with February 1st, 1882, of a "Revue Coléoptérologique." This Review will be divided into five parts: 1. Bibliography; II. New species described during the past month (latin diagnosis and precise reference); III. Synonymical remarks; IV. Necrology (if there be occasion for it); v. Sundry communications (sale of collections and books). Subscription price 10 francs for foreign countries. We have also received the prospectus of the Wiener Entomologische Zeitung, a journal to be devoted to general entomology, and to appear in 1882. It will be published "chez le libraire de la cour I. R. et de l'Université Alfred Hölder," and the editorial staff, which consists of Louis Ganglbauer, Francois Löw, Josèphe Mik, Edward Reitter and Franz Wachtl, is of a character to guarantee excellence. Price 8 marks. There is also a pros

pect of a new entomological journal from Paris, under the auspices of "La Société Francaise d'Entomologie," a new society which is being talked of among certain members of the Société Entomologique de France who find the old society too slow for them.

LOCUST PROBABILITIES FOR 1882.-In a letter from Missoula, Montana, written September 30th, Mr. Lawrence Bruner gave an encouraging report as to locust prospects. Starting from Ogden, Utah, he took the Utah and Northern railway to Melrose, Montana, laying off at various points along the Snake river, and in Southwestern Montana. From Melrose the route lay through the Valleys of the Big Hole, Deer Lodge and Hellgate rivers, all of which are noted as rich agricultural districts. From Missoula, Mr. Bruner went down the Missoula river to its junction with the Flathead river and thence on to the Spokane farming district. In reference to his observations in Montana, Mr. Bruner states: "So far I am led to believe there are no locust eggs east of the Rocky range this season. There were a few locusts in the Hellgate and Missoula valleys, also some in the valley of the Bitter Root. They left toward the west and north. A few eggs were deposited."

ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES.-Mr. C. A. Briggs gives in the October number of The Entomologist (London, Eng.) an illustrated account of a hermaphrodite hybrid between Smerinthus ocellatus and Smerinthus populi.

Mr. J. Jenner Wier of Blackheath, S. E., London, has recently studied some large collections of Lepidoptera made by Mr. E. G. Meek in the Outer Hebrides which consist chiefly of gneiss rocks and granite, and which are treeless and rather barren of other vegetation. Out of 56 species he was struck with the coloration in many which deviated from the normal coloring, especially among the Geometrida which showed the gray color of the gneiss, having varied in the direction of the color of their environment. Mr. V. R. Perkins records the capture of Heliothis armigera in Gloucestershire, Eng., and remarks on its sitting head-down

wards.

ANTHROPOLOGY.1

MR. MORGAN'S LAST WORK.-It seldom happens that a literary man lives to witness the completion of his labors. In the preface to Vol. IV., of the Contributions to North American Ethnology, upon the houses and house-life of the American aborigines, Mr. Morgan says: "As it will undoubtedly be my last work, I part with it under some solicitude; but submit it cheerfully to the indulgence of my readers." After the usual delay of printing, the volume made its appearance just in time to be placed in the author's hands upon his dying bed. "He feebly turned the pages, and as feebly murmured, my book." The New York Nation, of De1 Edited by Professor OTIS T. MASON, 1305 Q. street, N. W., Washington, D. C.