246 



state. The larvjE found late in autumn, remain a long time 

 unchanged in the ground, and are very apt to die during the 

 winter. After many trials with more than a hundred larvee in 

 all, I succeeded at last in obtaining one perfect moth from them, 

 and secured it before it had (like some others) injured itself by 

 beating about in confinement. I am glad to have cleared up 

 the history of this insect, which has been a puzzle to me these 

 ten years. 



A skilful gardener here encourages me to hope that my 

 Arbor vitae may recover from the attacks of the Oiketicus, 

 or Drop-worm. These insects, or what was left of them when 

 I last wrote to you, have nearly all perished. From your 

 specimens of the pods, I have obtained one perfect male, and 

 secured it while it was fresh and uninjured. I have also taken 

 out of their chrysalis skins two perfect and lively females, 

 have given one of them to an artist to figure with the male, 

 and have preserved the other in spirit. I have had good draw- 

 ings made of the worms, and shall have the chrysalis figured 

 also. This Oiketicus proves to be distinct from the two species 

 described and figured by Guilding in the Linnoean Transactions, 

 Vol. XV, and it is also, I think, different from the southern 

 species described in Newman's Entomologist by my lamented 

 friend Doubleday. Dr. (Emler of Savannah, has sent me a 

 copy of one of Abbot's drawings of this southern species. 

 The male is nearly twice as large as the Pennsylvania insect, 

 and differently colored. It lives also not on the Arbor. vita3, 

 but on Diospyrus, Gratcegus, etc. The climate of New Eng- 

 land is evidently unfavorable to these insects. The cold 

 weather and the rain that we had during the last of August 

 and beginning of September, before the Iarva9 had come to their 

 growth, proved fatal to nearly all of them. 



Among the very few insects that I brought from the White 

 Mountains was Say's Cicindela longilabris, figured under the 

 name of C. cdbolabris in Kirby's Fauna Boreali- Americana. I 

 found there another species of Cicindela apparently unde- 



