58 Entomological Society. material would be only about four pounds, an amount, which, if com-pressed, the farmer might with ease have carried home in one of his coat-pockets ! "—P. 39. Eli^ Fries Summa VegetaUUum Scandinavia. Holmiae et Lipsiae. A new work by Prof. Fries of Upsala — need we say more in its recommendation ? It may however be as well to mention the cha-racter of its contents. It has long been known that Fries was contemplating a Flora of Scandinavia, i.e., as he defines it, " inter mare occidentale et album, inter Eidoram et Nordkap." The present may be considered as the forerunner of such a work, since it contains a complete catalogue of Scandinavian plants accompanied by a tabular view of their distri-bution. This is followed by a synopsis of such species as are either not contained in the invaluable * Synopsis Florae Germanicse ' of Koch, or are considered by Fries to require further elucidation or correction. In short it may be considered, as observed by its author, to be an extension of the ' Synopsis Florae Germanicae,' which is bounded on the north by the Baltic Sea and the river Eyder, from that river, through Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lapland and Norway, to the North Cape. It is therefore essential to all who make use (and what botanist does not ?) of Koch's Synopsis. PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY, [Continued from vol. xviii. p. 473.] September 1st, 1845. — The Rev. F. W. Hope, President, in the Chair. *' Further notes on the Honey-bee." By Mr. Golding and Dr. Bevan. In this communication Mr. Golding again affirmed that the first swarm from a hive is led off by the queen-bee. He considered that it was chiefly owing to the striking peculiarity in the royal cells that the insects developed therein are so different from the ordinary indi-viduals in the hive. He adopts the opinion of Hiiber, that the great number of males in a hive is rendered necessary in order to ensure the fecundation of the virgin queen in her flight in the air, and that the law of primogeniture seems to be followed strictly in the emigration of young queens. From the fact that the long piping note of a young queen at liberty may be heard — but with short in-tervals of a minute or two — without intermission, from the time of her hatching until she comes off^ with the swarm, together with their having been seen to leave the hive in a day or two after being hived, he thinks it may be safely inferred that impregnation in the case of the young emigrant queen takes place after she becomes sovereign in her own right, and that she never leaves the hive until accom-panying the swarm.
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