Bigg, H.

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Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU Ba Bee Lab 10-28-1834 On a species of bee from the Brazils, found living on splitting a log of peach wood containing its comb. H. Bigg Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/bee_lab_ba  Part of the Entomology Commons Recommended Citation Bigg, H., "On a species of bee from the Brazils, found living on splitting a log of peach wood containing its comb." (1834). Ba. Paper 157. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/bee_lab_ba/157 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Bee Lab at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ba by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@usu.edu. us fQR RES ARCH 0 . or • IC rther reproducti on • . r U . i <> _ . fringe on , -October 28, 1 . y '°puthor(s). (Title 17, Richard Owen, Esq., i@~J~ air. • Living specimens _were e~hibite~ of a species o~ Be~ from South America, together with port10ns of its Comb, conta1!1ed m the fis~ure of a log of wood. They were pres_ented to the_ Society by M.t.Jli&g, who stated, in a note accompanymg the specimens, that they were found about three weeks since on splitting a log of peach wood from the Brazils for the use of a dye-house, on the premises of Mr. Apple-gath, a calico-printer at Crayford in Kent . The ,~ood had been previously lying in the docks, and had been perhaps eighteen months from the Brazils. . . Mr. Curtis, to whom specimens were submitted for exammabon, states that they belong to the genus Trigona, Jur ., and form.a Yery pretty and apparently undescribed species. Mr. Yarrell exhibited preparations of both sexes of Syngnat~IUI Acus Linn., and Syng11. 1'ypltle, Ej., in illustration of the followmg extr;ct from the manuscript notes of the late John Walcott, E~q., author of 'A Synopsis of British Bird:,' ' History of Ba_th J:'oss1ls,' and · • Flora Britannica Indigena.' This manuscript! which 1~ volu-minous, and relates wholly to British Fishes, was written durmg the author's residence at Teignmouth, in the years 1784 and 1785, and has been forwarded by his son William Walcott, Esq ., of So?~h-ampton, to Mr. Yarrell, for his use in a projected work on 'British Fishes.' . f h f: t "Syngnathus Acus and Typhle .-The ma_le differs rom t e ema_ e in the belly from the vent to the tail fin bemg much broader! and m having for about two thirds of its length two soft flaps, which fold together and form a false belly. They breed in the summer: the fe. males casting their roe int~ the false belly of th_e male. This I have asserted from having exammed many, and havmg constantly found, early in the summer, roe in t~ose without a ~alse belly, but never any in those with ; and on opemng them later m the summe! there has been no roe in (what I have termed) the female, but only m the false belly of the male ." The specimens exhibited of females of Syngn. Acus and Typhle had no anal pouch, and the opened abdom~n expo:ed two lobes of ova of large size in each. The anal pouch 1s peculiar to the males, and is closed by two elon·gated flaps. On separating these flap: ~nd ex-posing the inside, the ova, large and yellow, were _seen ~mmg the pouch in some specimens, while in others the hem1sphenc depres-"ions from which the ova had been but lately removed were very ~bvious. In each of these the opened abdomen exhibited true testes. Mr. ·walcott adds: "They begin to breed when onl~ between 4 and 5 inches long." A specimen of Sy~gn.Acus, nearly 16 mches long, was exhibited, indicating, probably, its extreme growth . A female - Hem 119 • f the same species, only 4 inches long, was also shown, the ahdo- • ,.P:!11 Q{ which contained two lobes of enlarged ova, which, to all ap-.S. ~Q-W ce, would have been deposited in a few days. . Specimens of males and females of Syn.gn. Ophidion, Linn., were also exhibited. In this species neither male nor female possesses an anal pouch, but the ova are carried by the male in hemispheric depres-sions on the external surface of the abdomen, anterior to the anus. All the specimens examined having these external depressions proved to be males, with the testes in the abdomen very obvious : those without external depressions proved to be all females, internally provided with two lobes of enlarged ova. The males of this species, when taken by Mr. Yarrell from the sea, had one ovum of the size and colour of a mustard-seed fixed in each cup-shaped depression, but time and the effects of a long journey had removed them. Dr. Fleming in his 'History of Britit,h Animals,' page 176, states the length of Syngn. Ophidion at about 5 inches: some of Mr. Yarrell's specimens measured 9 inches. · Mr. Yarrell further stated that the males of Syngn. Acus carry their living young in the anal pouch, even after they have been hatched there. He had been frequently told by fishermen that on opening them they had found the living young within the pouch, which they called the belly ; and that if these young were shaken out into the water over the side of the boat, they did not swim away, but when the parent fish was held in the water in a favourable position, the young would again enter the pouch. It was observed by M . Agassiz, that the fact of the males of cer-tain species of the genus Syngnatlius carrying the ova in a peculiar abdominal pouch, after their exclusion by. the female, had been no-ticed on the Continent by Eckstrom, Retzius, and Marcklin; and that he had himself made the same observation. M. Agassiz exhibited drawings of several species of Lepisosteus, together with some of the details of their internal organization; and, at the request of the Chairman, explained his views with regard to their systematic arrangement and structure, as well as to their rela-tions with various genera of fossil fishes, and the coincidence of some parts of their internal anatomy with that of Reptiles. He described two new species observed by him in the British Museum, taking his characters principally from the form and sculpture of the scales, the presence or absence of the short rays at the base of the caudal and other fins, and the variations in the form and disposition of the teeth. In reference to their internal structure, he particularly called the at-tention of the Meeting to the large and regular slit by which the swimming-bladder communicates with the pltaryn:r; which he re-garded as' bearing even a closer resemblance to the entrance of the trachea of the pulmoniferous Vertebrata in general, than the aperture by means of which the lungs communicate with the pharynx in the Perennibranchiate Ampliibia. He conceived, therefore, that the ana-tomy of these fishes offers a conclusive argument in favour of the theory, long since proposed, that the swimming-bladder of Fishes is .. ,..,_~w ··, ·" • . .,~ , ,. .,,, _ .,. _ _ ~• -."• •• ~- -. • • - ·,,.,_._,,_ ,.. : - •• - .""'"'.:- . . · •'. _ 120 analogous to the lungs of the other Vertebrata. He spoke of the num-ber of the crecal appendages as greater in Lepisosteus than in any other fish which he had dissected; and referring to certain fossil bo-dies by which geologists have long been puzzled, and which . ha,•c been regarded as fossil worms, he stated his opinion, from the close resemblance between the two, that they are in reality the crecal ap-pendages of the fossil fishes, in whose company they are generally found. Mr. Gray exhibited young shells of Argonauta Argo and Arg. Ai. ans, with the view of calling the attention of the Society to a new argument in favour of the opinion that the animal (Ocythoe) found in the shells of this genus is parasitic . This argument is founded on the size of what Mr. Gray has termed the nucleus of the shell, viz. that original portion of it which covered the animal within the egg, and which is usually found to differ in surface and appearance from the remainder of the shell formed after its exclusion from the egg. In the specimens exhibited Mr. Gray described the nucleus as blunt, rounded, thin, slightly and irregularly concentrically wrinkled, and destitute of the radiating waves which are common to the adult shells of all the species of this genus. These waves he stated to commence immediately below the thin hemispherical tips, and he therefore entertained no doubt that those tips constituted the nucleus of the shell, and covered the embryo of the animal at the period of its exclusion from the egg. Judging from the size of this portion of the !!hell, which in one of the specimens measured nearly one third of an inch in diameter, and was consequently many times larger than the largest eggs of the Ocythoe found within the Argonaut shells, Mr. Gray inferred that it must have been produced by an animal whose eggs are of much greater magnitude. The OcythoiJ cannot therefore, he conceived, be the constructor of the shell, and its true artificer still remains to be discovered. Mr. Gray further remarked, with reference to Poli's statement that he had observed the rudiment of a shell on the back of the embryo, of Ocythoe examined by him, that he has himself uniformly found, in all the eggs of Mollusca which . he has examined, the shell well developed, even before the develop-ment of the various organs of the embryo. With respect to the ar-gument derived from the want of muscular attachment, he observed that the animal of Carinaria (to which he considered it probable that that of Argonauta is most nearly related), although firmly attached to the shell while living, separates from it with the greatest ease when preserved in spirits, being from its gelatinous nature very rea-dily dissolved. These circumstances, he conceived, might fairly ac-count for the animal of Carinaria having been, until very recently, unknown, and for that of Argonauta still remaining undiscovered. 121 November 11, 1834. Dr. Marshall Hall, in the Chair. A specimen w~s exhibited ?f a species of Monacanthus, Cuv., re-markable for havmg on each side of the body, about midway between the pectoral and cn~dnl fins,_ a bundle of l~ng and strong spines di-r~ct~d b~ckwards. ~he_spec1e~ was fi_gured m Willughby'11 • Historia P_Iscmm, and a descrip~10n of It by Lister is contained in the Appen-dix to that work; but It appears not to have been noticed by subse-quent obser~ers, _and to h~ve been altogether overlooked or rejected ~y systematic writers . Lister's specimen of the Fish was preserved m _the collection of William Courten, the founder of the museum which became subsequently the property of Sir Hans Sloane and eventually formed the basis of the British Museum: that br~ught-und~r the notice of the Meeting belongs to the Museum of the Army ~ed!cal De1;>artment at Ch~tham, and was exhibited with the per-T?-1ss1on of Sir James Macgrigor. It waa accompanied by a descrip-tion by Staff-Surgeon Burton, which was read. MoNf~ANT~u.s HYs;R:X· Mon. lateribus in medio G-7-spinoais, spinis val1d1s long1or1bus. · Guaperva Hystrix, List., in Will.Hist. Pisc., .App.p. 21. Tab.S.21. "Length 7 inc~es. Colo~r black. Skin crowded with rough grains; a smooth spo~ behmd the gills; towards the tail assuming tlie charac-ter of rhombo1~ scales, but the granular form continued over the caudal fin. On the ~ides, about one third of its length from the tail, is fixed a cluster of six or seve;11 strong free spines from + to I inch in length capable of erection and depression. • . "Dorsal 11pine very strong, about l¼ inch long, subtrianguiar, with serrated edges, and grained, except towards the point • when not erecte~ it i~ lodged in a deep groove on the back. Extremity of the pelvis salient, and te~inating in two sharp short spines. Se-co?,d dorsal fin broad and 2 mches long; anal similar, but shorter. I!l f~ont of the eyes a ~~allfossa covered with a membrane, ex, cept m its centre, where 1t 1s perforated by a minute olfactory fo-ramen. " Te_eth in the upper jaw eight, the two middle incisors placed di-rectly m front of the second pair, in a groove of which they are lodged, so that no part of these last are visible externally, except a -'mall process at th~ cutt_ing edge ; . the outer teeth trigonal. The tee!h of the low~r Jaw differ matenally from the generic character, their number be1~g only four, of which the two middle ones are by far the largest m the mouth. On this account, and also ori ac. count of the nature of its covering,-which partakes of the granulal' characte _r of that of Monacanthus andAluterus, Cuv., and of the rhom., No . XXIII. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ZooLOGICAL SocrnTY. ·· - - - -➔-- - . .. _ - · - - - ·- - · - - - ·· -- · - · · ----

On a species of bee from the Brazils, found living on splitting a log of peach wood containing its comb.

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On a species of bee from the Brazils, found living on splitting a log of peach wood containing its comb.

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