200 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



On a second \isit to this tree in the first half of June I had 

 the good hick to capture a second specimen, and this year at the 

 same date on a similar log in a wood farther east I captured a 

 third. 



At the end of June, some miles west of Peterborough, on a 

 torn limb of basswood (in which the sap was probably fermenting) 

 I took a specimen of Li ptoslylus macula, and out of curiosity 

 revisited the tree in Burnham's wood. Here on one of the upper 

 branches I found — apparently waiting for me — its duplicate. 



In this same month of June, while following a path through 

 the wood, I caught sight of a \ery beautiful chrysalis fastened to 

 the underside of a leaHet of butternut. It was short and broad, 

 white with black markings; it appeared to be thick through and 

 ornarnented with ridges or prominences (mi the tace of it; visions 

 of a brand new chrysomelid floated before me. Unfortunately the 

 leaf of butternut was firmly attached to a stem 12 or H feet up 

 the tree. As I circled round the base of it, with my eye glued 

 on the chrysalis, no doubt I made a good picture for an up-to-date 

 version of .^^Isop's fables — The Fox and tiie Grapes. Well, there 

 was no help for it! If I wanted that chrysalis, I'd got to climb. 

 The revival of a long disused habit — like that of climbing trees — 

 sometimes recalls interesting memories. It is said that the late 

 Prof. Bain, of Aberdeen, soon after the publication of Darwin's 

 "Descent of Man," was found crawling about his study floor in 

 the hope of recovering some of the long-lost sensations of primitive 

 man before he assumed the erect habit. Who knows but that I 

 might, on the same atavistic principle, retrieve some arboreal 

 memor\- from cjuadrumanous ancestors as they swung nimbly 

 down the forest aisles. Here goes, anyway! and I approached the 

 tree. Somehow it didn't look so simple as speeling up the drying- 

 green posts at the age of ten; for one thing, it seemed hard to get 

 close enough to the tree to embrace it; but, as soon as I laid my 

 cheek to the bark and threw my arms about the stem, my shins 

 and feet seemed to correlate instinctively, and up I swarmed. 

 Nor was it so much force of gravity that stopped me half way up, 

 as the ludicrous thought of a new^ chapter in Dickens, adding yet 

 another to the long list of undignified attitudes involuntiirily 

 struck bv the immortal Samuel Pickwick. Assurediv if anvone 



