73 



season. There is another species a little smaller, without the 

 silver spot, which is suggested by the country people here, to 

 be the young of the preceding one a year old. Then we have 

 the seed-tick, which will appear about the middle of this month. 

 They swarm in the woods, and are seen always gathered in a 

 lump of four or five hundred holding together tight at the end of 

 a blade of grass. As soon as you touch them with the foot or leg 

 they instantly scatter on your body. Then ! then ! you have 

 fine work in scratching. I could not think of a worse punish- 

 ment to my greatest enemy than to have one of these little 

 flocks to scratch off every morning. The country people here 

 have a firm belief that these are the progeny of the big ticks 

 which fall off in the autumn from the sides of the cattle ; and 

 that the blood which they contain is during the winter converted 

 into these sociable little mites ! ! 



Some time in March or April, I discovered in a standing- 

 trunk of a decaying tree, about thirty larva} of an insect which 

 were feeding on the black mould resulting from the decomposi- 

 tion of the wood. They so completely resembled the larva of 

 Sear abacus Tityrm that I took them for such, and brought 

 them home in my handkerchief to feed them in a pot with the 

 substance in which they were found. They were so large that 

 I did not doubt they would transform this season, and I in- 

 tended to save some in spirits in all the states so as to try to 

 make out the anatomy and history of the insect. I did so, and 

 kept about twenty-five in the black mould. About five weeks 

 ago, they began to make their nests for transformation. These 

 are about the size of turkeys' eggs and are nothing but the 

 mere mould glued with a viscous substance, and having a cen- 

 tral cavity of the size of a small hen's egg, in which the insect 

 changed to a pupa state. About a week ago, I opened them 

 and found that they were all transformed; but they were not the 

 8. Tityrus as I thought, but Phileurus Didymus, which, by its 

 habits, had puzzled me so much formerly. By the by, you would 

 oblige me by giving me the characters of Phileurus from La- 



