INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1876. clxiii 



The young or larva3 of certain cave beetles from the Mammoth and 

 adjoining caves are figured and briefly described by Dr. Packard in 

 the American Naturalist for May. It appears that the young as well 

 as the adult beetles are blind, otherwise they do not difler much 

 from the young of allied genera. The beetles are Adelops and 

 AnopJitJialmus. Besides these, a blind coleopterous larva belonging 

 to an unknown species was discovered in the Carter caves in Eastern 

 Kentucky. Remarks are also made on the degree of variation in 

 these cave insects, which seems due more to varying means of sub- 

 sistence than any other cause. The amount of variation, however, 

 is very slight. 



It has been found that certain Australian moths are capable of 

 puncturing orange - skins by means of their proboscis or spiral 

 tongue. It seems that the ends of the two halves of the tongue are 

 stiff and barbed, and present on the under side three parts of the 

 thread of a screw, while their sides on the upper surface are covered 

 with short spines, springing from a depression, with sharp, hard 

 sides. The object of these spines is to tear the cells and the pulp 

 of the orange, as a rasp opens those of beet - root, to extract the 

 sugar. 



A writer in the American Naturalist notices an interesting instance 

 of intelligence in the hawk-moth (Sphinx). While watching the 

 sudden unfolding of the flowers of the Oenothera LamarMana^ he 

 observed that the hawk- moths never visited the same flower twice, 

 even when frightened away by some motion made b}^ the observer. 

 On returning, they would go only to those flowers that had opened 

 during their absence or that had not been visited before their flight. 



In the fifth Bulletin of Hayden's United States Geological Survey 

 of the Territories is a list of the bugs (Hemiptera) of the region west 

 of the Mississippi River by Mr. Uhler, who has for so many years 

 devoted himself to these insects. A number of new forms are de- 

 scribed. The article is made still more useful by the addition of 

 three excellent plates. 



Professor StoU, of Stockholm, has published an extensive work on 

 the hemipterous insects of the world, one half of the work relating 

 to those of North and South America. 



Professor Riley's " Notes on the Yucca Borer " {Megathymus yxiccci)^ 

 reprinted from the Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. 

 Louis, is an interesting account, well illustrated, of a butterfly which 

 bores into the root, tunneling it for most of its length. The insect 

 is suflRciently common in the Gulf States to be sometimes found in 

 every third plant over extended regions, its work rendering the yuc- 

 ca worthless as a hedge plant. 



The geometrid moths, numbering in the United States some four 

 hundred species already known, have been monographed by the 

 writer, in a quarto work of over six hundred pages, with tliirtecn 



