THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 197 



POPULAR AND PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY. 



Fresh Woods and Pastures New. 

 by francis j. a. morris, peterborough, ont. 



IL 



Just east of the city, overlooking the Lift Lock, stands a high 

 hill, bare of trees. Yet even this naked hog's back has points of 

 interest; for example, a month ago I discovered that a strange 

 family had established squatter's rights on the face of it; they 

 had come from the far west, but whether hobo-fashion, bumping 

 it along the railway, or as stowaways in one of the large grain 

 boats so often seen (by politicians and farmers) plying back and 

 forth on the Trent Valley Canal, I do not know. Their godfather 

 was a Russian, Hieronymus Grindel, and Gray describes them as 

 "rarely adventive" eastward; rare or not, they have certainly 

 arrived at Peterborough and come to stay: Grindelia sjiiarrosa, 

 the Gum-plant or Tar-weed. But the chief point of interest in 

 this hill just now is the extensive view it affords of Peterborough's 

 environs. It was from its summit as a vantage ground that I first 

 spied a long stretch of thickly wooded country, about a mile south 

 of the Lift Lock and running east as far as the eye could see. 

 The nearest point in this line of forest is Burnham's wocd. 



My first expedition to this discovered a number of newly- 

 felled pines en a side-road near the Burnham farmhouse and 

 orchard. These were visited two or three times in June, and be- 

 sides the common Monohammi, Clerids and Buprestids of the 

 white pine, I captured seven specimens of Acantliociniis obsoletns, 

 a light grey beetle with extremely long antenna?; it is very fond of 

 resting on the under side of the trunk of pine trees in their first 

 season of decay. I once captured nearly a score of these in the 

 first half of June on a single pine, that in falling had lodged in the 

 crotch of a neighbouring tree. I took also five specimens of a 

 Neodytiis, which I think is longipes: head, thorax and body black, 

 with three grayish-white lines of pubescence on each elytron; viz., a 

 vertical crescent at the base, an oblique median line, and a trans- 

 verse wavy line near the apex. I have taken it before on white 

 pine, and have never found it on any other tree; the kindred 

 species, erythrocephalus, reddish-brown in colour with yellow marks 



June, 1916 



