226 



branched filaments, from their constant motion evidently 

 connected with respiration. Unfortunately the specimen was 

 lost before a drawing could be made of it. Classification will 

 become still more complicated if it turns out that there are 

 aquatic larvae among the Lampyridce ; and this should serve as 

 a caution against removing Eurypalpus from the Cebrionites. 1 



I have not now any specimens of Xenos Peckii, the only one 

 of the Strepsiptera which I have seen. This species infests our 

 common Polities fuscata, the species of slender, brown wasp 

 that makes an open, horizontal comb, suspended by a stem 

 beneath some sheltered spot. I have found their combs in the 

 hollows of the skulls of sheep. Some naturalists have stated that 

 only female Hymenoptera are infested by the Strepsiptera ; but 

 I have seen as many males as females attacked by them. I used 

 to find the infested wasps most plentiful about the twentieth 

 of August, when pears begin to ripen and fall from the trees. 

 These wasps are very fond of the fallen decaying pears ; and 



1 [I append here a note of a similar larva found by Prof. Clark two years previously, 

 addiHg Dr. Harris's note thereon, and a memorandum by Dr. LeConte.] 



This Coleopterous larva found at Fresh Pond on August 17th, 1851 [PI. Ill, fig. 7], 

 adheres to the surface of stones and generally to such as are round; the circulation 

 of water among the branchiae is kept up by the flapping of the tail-piece. The sides 

 of the body are extended out into a broad, concavo-convex shield, under which the 

 head and feet are hidden. The head is furnished with mandibles, maxillae and their 

 palpi and biarticulate antennae ; the base of attachment to the tail-piece is raised 

 into a high rim. Cellular transparent branches extend out from the sides of the 

 abdomen into the flattened side pieces, toward the extreme edge of which tracheae 

 may be seen branching. H. J. Clark. 



On comparing the description of the supposed larva of Eurypalpus Lecontei given by 

 Dr. LeConte in the Lake Superior of Agassiz and Cabot, p. 241, with Mr. Clark's 

 drawings, the former will be seen to differ in several respects from the latter. Dr. Le- 

 Conte says that the head " is concealed under the large, shield-like prolongation of 

 the dorsal epidermis of the prothorax." If Mr. Clark has rightly represented the 

 connections of the legs, the portion anterior to them, which covers the head, cannot 

 be a prolongation of the prothorax, but must belong to the head alone, and is to be 

 regarded as a clypeus. Dr. LeConte says that the antennae are " a little longer than 

 the head" ; in the drawing they are much longer than the head and each joint shows 

 no " tendency to become divided at the middle"; the maxillary palpi are more than 

 " half the length of the antennas." Dr. LeConte says that " the abdomen is furnished 

 on each side with six bunches of long branchial filaments"; in the drawing there are 



