198 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



on the elytra, prefers hardwoods, especially oak, hawthorn and 

 maple. Towards the end of June I captured on the same pine trunks 

 a specimen of Leptostylus sex-guttatus (commixtus). 



Rather nearer the wood was a swamp of willow and alder, 

 and early in June, while testing out the local distribution of Chryso- 

 mela, I spied the graceful outline of a longicorn's antenna projecting 

 over the edge of an alder leaf just above my head. The sun was 

 near the zenith, and I could see through the leaf the oblong shadow 

 of the insect's body. By mounting on. a large overturned pine 

 stump I could just reach up to the leaf and carefully closed my 

 finger and thumb over the quarry. I then broke off the leaf with 

 my free hand and succeeded in transferring my capture to the 

 cyanide bottle. To my surprise this proved to be a pair of longicorns 

 — the male barely a third the size of the female. I had never seen 

 the beetle before. It was Balyle ignicoUis, but, so far, I have been 

 able to learn nothing of its life-history. 



The wood it.self was a somewhat low-lying hardwood with 

 hemlock intermingled; a couple of paths ran through it that had 

 been used in the spring at the gathering of maple sap. Near one 

 of these paths were some stumps and also a large fallen tree of 

 basswood. The first find I made was in fresh fungus on one of 

 the stumps. Here i captured fully a score of a certain staphylinid: 

 apparently oil in the same colony, yet (according tc cabinet methods) 

 there w-ere specimens here of fi\e or six species. I am glad to see 

 that Blatchley is suspicious of this unnatural system of classi- 

 fication. If there is any value in field observation, his suspicions 

 are more than justified. The beetle was Oxyporus, and my speci- 

 mens showed ever\- sort of gradation from black to yellow, an- 

 swering to three or four of Blatchley's specific descriptions, and 

 probably several others not given in Blatchley. Half of them, no 

 doubt, simply varietal and based on a single capture. 



About the sheaf of leaves sprouting round the stump I took 

 one or two specimens of Saperda vestita, and, on the trunk of the 

 fallen basswood in the first week of June a treat was in store for 

 me that I had not had for seven years or more, immense numbers 

 of the basswood Saperda emerging from the bark or ovipositing 

 on the trunk. There is a certain season, early in June, and no 

 other (in my experience) when this sight is possible. Two or three 



