Four specimens, taken in Canada by Mr. Barnstone, are in the cabinet of the British Museum.-Edward Newman; Peckham, January, 1844.

Description of Callidium rubeocolle, a new Beetle belonging to the Stirps Macrocera and the Order Cerambycites. The upper or dorsal surface of the prothorax is of a dull red colour, and every other part of an intense black, and more or less clothed with short black hairs, which are more particularly observable on the antennæ and legs. The prothorax and elytra are completely covered with large irregular confluent punctures, these punctures are largest about the base of the latter, and gradually decrease in size towards the apex: the femora are incrassated externally: the under side of the abdomen is punctured and tomentose. Its length is 65 inch and its breadth 225 inch. A single specimen, found by Mr. Lea at Cincinnati and sent to Mr. E. Doubleday, is now in the cabinet of the British Museum.-Id.

Captures of Coleoptera in Gloucestershire, in December, 1843. The following is a list of Coleoptera, which I captured during a residence on the Cotswold-hills in Gloucestershire in December last. The season being unusually mild, the greater part of them I took in the utmost profusion. Farmington-grove, in the neighbourhood of Northleach, is decidedly the best locality, where, by examining the moss at the roots of trees, I met with tolerable success. And although it may be observed that several of the following insects are common in most localities, yet having never seen them in such abundance before, I think them worthy of being noticed.

-T. V. Wollaston; Jesus Coll. Cambridge, January, 1843.

Apion subsulcatum
Salpingus planirostris
Haltica atra

Salicariæ

Thyamis melanocephala

lurida

Macrocnema Spergulæ
Chilocorus renipustulatus

Note on the occurrence of the Locust in Yorkshire. Thinking that the following account of the appearance of the Asiatic locust in Yorkshire last year, may not be uninteresting to your readers, I have taken the liberty of troubling you with a letter on the subject. Two of these insects were given to me on the 9th of September, 1842, by a labourer at Holmpton (a village situated quite on the sea), who had found them in an oat-field, where he, his wife and some others were harvesting. Not having seen any of the species before, they were, at first, afraid of touching them; but happening to know that I was a collector, they were so kind as to catch them for me, which they succeeded in doing without injuring any part of their bodies. I placed them in a box with a supply of green food, of which they partook very sparingly. On the 18th of September, finding one of them nearly dead, and that the other had eaten part of its wings, I killed and preserved it: the other specimen lived until the 26th of September. During their confinement, I frequently amused myself by letting them out of the box and seeing the distance they could spring, which, when I first had them, was certainly not less that ten or twelve feet. A window, a little more that a yard from the ground, was the point to which their aim was always directed, and they generally, if placed at a distance, say five or six feet, sufficient to enable them to attain power enough, succeeded in getting into it.

Three more specimens were taken in my neighbourhood,

one at Hollymor, a village about two miles from the sea, and two more by a gentleman residing at Roos, which is little more than a mile from the coast. According to the following paragraph from the Hull Packet' of September the 9th, 1842, this insect has also been taken near Scarborough. 66 Scarborough, Sept. 8. Extraordinary visitant. Rarely has the locust, that terrible scourge of so many warmer climates, been seen in our favoured land. But exceptions do occur; and two specimens of the African species, upwards of three inches in length, were taken last week in this vicinity; one is yet alive in the possession of a gentleman in Scarborough, and the other has been preserved by Mr. Williamson for the Museum. It is truly to be hoped that these are only accidental stragglers, and not the avant couriers of a flight such as alarmed the southern parts of England, and especially London, in August, 1748." I have also copied a paragraph from the 'Yorkshire Gazette' of January, 21, 1843, from which it appears that this insect was also found further inland about the same time last year. "Locusts in England. About three weeks ago a labouring man took a specimen of the Gryllus migratorius, or Asiatic locust, in a field at Stonegravels, near Chesterfield. The man, being struck by its unusual appearance and activity, after a severe chase, succeeded in capturing it in safety. It is now in the cabinet of a gentlemau in Chesterfield. We understand that several others have been taken in this and the neighbouring counties in the present year; one in Sheffield in the beginning of September, another in Mickleover, near Derby, nearly at the same time; a third about the middle of the same month, near Burton-on-Trent; the latter was found to be a female, containing about forty or fifty eggs, apparently ready to be deposited. The gentleman who captured the last-mentioned specimen, says that he disturbed it in getting over a hedge near which it was reposing; and that, when first discovered, the insect sprang a distance of fourteen yards. Stamford Mercury." William Sherwood; Rysome Garth, near Patrington, Holderness, Yorkshire, January, 1844.

Notice of Branchiæ in Pteronarcys regalis.*

THE labours of Marcel de Serres, Leon Dufour, Savigny and StrausDurckheim, have justly excited the admiration of all those, who going beyond the superficial and arbitrary distinctions on which the genera of insects are founded, have studied their organization, and sought wisdom from the fountain-head-Nature herself. Beautiful and truly wonderful are the facts, the adaptations, the contrivances which these authors have unfolded, illustrated and explained; and the obligations they have conferred on the students of insect-anatomy, is cheerfully and universally acknowledged. Still, when we analyse their labours and divide them into so many separate discoveries, not one of those

* On the existence of Branchiæ in the perfect state of a Neuropterous Insect, Pteronarcys regalis, Newman, and other species of the same genus. By GEORGE NEWPORT, Pres. Ent. Soc. &c. Read at the Meeting of the Entomological Society, Dec. 4, 1843, and printed in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History' for January,

discoveries appears so anomalous, so important, so intensely interesting, as that just made by Mr. Newport, of the external branchiæ of a perfect winged insect. It is well known that many of the same order of insects the Perlites-possess external branchiæ in their preparatory stages; but an obvious reason exists for this, in the fact that in their earlier stages the Perlites are almost entirely aquatic; and this form of lung, so to speak, is admirably adapted for abstracting from the water the necessary supply of air: but it has been generally supposed that the only mode by which animals could inspire or expire atmospheric air, was by its entrance into or propulsion from internal receptacles through apertures in the outer covering of the body. This is not, however, strictly the case; for although it is common with isomorphous Neuroptera to spend the period of their preparatory states in the water, exceptions occur, and we find the immature state of a not uncommon Perla, secreting itself by hundreds in the crevices of the bark of pollard willows, when growing in districts abundantly intersected by running streams. The creatures appear very inactive by day, and crouch flat on their bellies, but probably at night they sally forth in quest of the insects which the bark of trees seems to attract. Be this as it may, these creatures, although no longer subaqueous or, supposing they resort to the water by night, of which we have no evidence, at least not constantly subaqueous- yet retain an external apparatus for breathing very similar to that of their subaqueous congeners. Still we are prepared for this close coincidence between creatures of the same genus, and in the same states: but that an instance should have been found in which an entire genus carries this structure with it into its ultimate or imago state, seems to baffle all our researches for precedent, and present a feature in insect anatomy for which we are wholly unprepared. Many of our entomological readers will recollect the ingenious hypothesis suggested by Latreille, that the wings of insects were transmuted organs of respiration: the idea that the same organs would serve the double purpose of respiration and locomotion, is due, we believe, to the fact that such was actually the case with the external branchia of the subaqueous larvæ of Perlites and Ephemerites, the insect using its branchiæ as fins to propel it through the water. Mr. Newport's discovery places a direct negative on the hypothesis, since throughout the genus Pteronarcys the wings as well as branchiæ are invariably present, the wings occupying the dorsal, the branchiæ the ventral surface. He describes the

branchiæ as follows.

"They are of the tufted or filamentous form of branchiæ. They consist of eight

pairs of branchial sacs, from the exterior of which proceed numerous elongated, setose filaments, which together form a thick tuft on each sac. These branchiæ are situated, as described by Pictet in the larva state of Nemoura cinerea, Pictet, over the proper spiracular orifices or entrances to the great longitudinal trachea of the body, at the inferior lateral parts of the thorax and basilar segments of the abdomen. The first pair of sacs is in the tegument of the neck, between the head and prosternum; the second and third pairs, each of which is composed of two tufts, between the prosternum and mesosternum, behind the coxæ of the first pair of legs: the fourth and fifth between the mesosternum and metasternum, behind the coxæ of the second pair of legs: and the sixth pair behind those of the third pair of legs, at the junction of the thorax with the abdomen. The seventh and eighth pairs, formed each of single tufts, are attached more laterally, the seventh to the first, and the eighth to the second basilar segments of the abdomen. These latter branchiæ correspond in situation in the segments to that of some apparently closed or obsolete spiracles at the sides of the succeeding segments. The situation of the branchiæ themselves is thus as anomalous as their existence in the perfect insect. In most instances branchiæ are arranged along the sides of the abdominal segments of the larva, and are often employed to assist in locomotion but they cannot be of use for this purpose in the larvæ and pupa of these Perlidæ, which move by means of large and powerful limbs. In Pteronarcys the two posterior pairs of legs of the pupa have the tibiæ densely ciliated, for swimming, like those

of the Dyticidæ, so that the delicate filamentose branchiæ can afford little, if any, assistance in this function. The structure of the filaments themselves differs also from that of the filamentose branchiæ of the Sialidæ, in which these organs are said to be quadri- or quinque-articulated, and are employed as organs of locomotion. In Pteronarcys they are simple unarticulated filaments. Each filament is soft, delicate, and gradually tapered from its base to its extremity, and ends in a slightly obtuse point. Internally each filament is traversed longitudinally by a tracheal vessel, which becomes, like the filament itself, more and more slender, and at last divides into two branches,

which may be traced to the extremity of the filament: but I have not been able to discover any orifice in the extremity of the filament, nor any direct communication whatever between the external surface and the ramifications of these trachea, and I doubt much whether any such direct communication exists."

gen

Mr. Newport's specimen was brought by Mr. Barnstone in spirits from Canada, together with many other highly-interesting NorthAmerican insects, the whole of which have been presented by that tleman to the cabinet of the British Museum. Mr. Barnstone, who appears much devoted to Natural History, paid great attention to the Perlites in their native localities, and made some highly interesting observations on their economy. He remarked that the so-called pupa of Pteronarcys regalis, in the state immediately preceding its attaining the power of flight, lived constantly in the water at the bottom of streams; while the corresponding state of Perla abnormis, - the largest species yet known of the genus Perla, - was invariably hidden in the clefts of water-logged timber, the trunks of trees and other places on the banks, and he has found its exuviæ under stones along the banks of rivers; thus closely corresponding in economy with the English species to which we have already alluded. Mr. Newport

enquires whether any analogous discrepancy exists in the habits of the perfect insects of the two species. The species of Pteronarcys, as observed by Mr. Branstone, shun the light of day, hiding themselves under stones in damp places, and it is only at nightfall, when the air is charged with moisture, that they appear on the wing. In this respect, however, they differ but little from the true Perle of the old continent. It is a most interesting question, as proposed by Mr. Newport, whether this peculiar structure is a provision of Nature for the damp atmosphere in which the Pteronarcys generally passes its life, or whether the persistent branchiæ are accidentally retained, the functions of aëration being performed by other means. Mr. Newport observes:

"In regard to the function of aëration being performed by these branchiæ in the perfect insect, I may remark that it is of little consequence to the preservation of animal life whether aëration of the fluids of the body be effected directly, by means of air received into the body in lungs, or in spiracles and trachea, or indirectly, by means of water or vapour, that holds air intermixed with it, through the agency of external branchial organs, in which case the air is brought into contact with the fluids through the surface of these organs in water equally well as in the open atmosphere, when air is taken into the body through the spiracles. The function of branchiæ, or aquatic organs, is equally well performed in the open air as in water, so long as the air is charged with a sufficiency of fluid to preserve these organs in a healthy state."

We trust Mr. Newport will pursue the enquiry he has so ably com