Abstract
THE Rev. A. H. Cooke has given the whole of his collection of shells of land-snails of the genus Clausilia and of the dog whelk (Thais lapillus); the former is very rich in series from central Europe and the Balkans, and the latter includes specimens from practically the whole distributional area, and illustrates very completely the remarkable variation of this species. Recent accessions to the Department of Entomology include the final instalment, consisting of several hundred Hymenoptera, of the very large amount of material collected by the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Seychelles and other islands of the western Indian Ocean. This expedition, which was led by Prof, (then Mr.) Stanley Gardiner, in 1905 and 1908–9, resulted in the gift of many thousands of specimens to the Museum. The final instalment consists almost entirely of small or minute wasps, many of them obviously new, which it has so far proved impossible to work out owing to the lack of specialists in these groups. The Department has also received a set of the Hymenoptera collected on the island of Rodriguez by the late H. J. Snell and by Mr. H. P. Thomasset. From Mount Kina Balu in North Borneo a series of a new species of Blepharocera has been sent by Mr. H. M. Pendlebury. Flies of this genus have hitherto been found only in the north temperate regions, and their discovery in Borneo is therefore both surprising and of importance in zoogeography. The larvse of these insects live only in waterfalls and rapids, attaching themselves to rocks and stones by means of ventral suckers; and it has been considered therefore that they would be able to spread only along land routes. The four, widely separated, compound eyes in this species give the head a most remarkable appearance. The American Museum of Natural History has presented to the Department of Geology a model of an extinct straight-tusked elephant.
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Recent Acquisitions at the British Museum (Natural History). Nature 131, 301 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131301a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131301a0