166 



species and some others I know to be fungi vorous. The marmo- 

 reus of Olivier (= lunatus Fabr.) lives upon a tree Boletus, and 

 the variec/atus of Say upon the smut of wheat ( Uredo segetum) 

 and other grains. The other discovery is that of considerable 

 numbers of the rare Horia sanguinipennis of Say, taken early 

 in April on the sands beyond Mt. Auburn. They had appar- 

 ently just come out of holes in the sand. These insects never 

 fly, being wingless, but crawl about upon the sand, and proba- 

 bly lay their eggs in the burrows of some of the sand bees or 

 other fossorial Hymenoptera, several kinds of which inhabit the 

 spot. The males are distinguished from the females by their 

 thicker antennae, and by having a longitudinal row of four vel- 

 vet-like patches on the ventral surface of the abdomen. 



HARRIS TO DOUBLEDAY. 



CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 12, 1845. 



Some of my agricultural friends have sent me specimens, 

 in various conditions, of an insect which has committed great 

 devastations in some portions of this country ; and I am called 

 upon to give an account of the insect. I have had a bottle full 

 of the moths from Virginia; and though they are all more or less 

 rubbed and damaged, they will serve for the purpose of exami- 

 nation to determine the genus. From specimens in the larva 

 state, sent from Worcester, Mass., I was so fortunate as to 

 obtain a very few (five only) of the moths in good condition. 



By the tabular sketch contained in Latreille's Families Natu- 

 relles it appears that these insects belong to his genus (Ecopliora, 

 a genus, however (in the extent he gave to it), which does not 

 seem to be admitted by modern entomologists. I suppose that 

 Ha worth would have put the insect in his genus Reeurvaria. I 

 have Humphrey and Westwood's British Moths and West- 

 wood's " Synopsis of the Genera of British Insects," and have 



