THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST "201 



caught me before I caught that chrysalis, I should be haled off 

 to the nearest lunatic asylum. The thought of the chrysalis spurred 

 me up the few feet remaining, and when I did slide down to the 

 ground, it was not empty-handed. The discovery of three more 

 of these pupa, not many yards further on and within easy reach, 

 was a trifle disconcerting; but if (I reflected) this did eventually 

 prove a new beetle, four specimens were none too many. Little 

 did I know then that hundreds of this creature — a regular colony 

 — were hiding in the bushes just round the corner, chuckling up 

 their sleeves, probably, at the amazing spectacle of Pickwick 

 heaving his bulk up a butternut tree. Its very name, when I came 

 to discover it, seemed a piece of mocking irony — A?iatis, the 

 Innocent. 



I followed the path along to the north end of the wood, through 

 a belt of cedars, to look at a fine colony of Adders' Tongue Fern, 

 and then turned west. After skirting the edge of the wood for a 

 space, the path presently dipped in again among the trees. Here 

 and there I passed a glade grown up with Early Elder, and suddenly 

 was arrested by a gleam of bright prussian blue and yellow among 

 the leaves. This contrasted colour-scheme characterizes one of 

 the moths as well as a Lampyrid beetle; and more than once I 

 had been disappointed in this way, when I fancied myself stalking 

 and about to bag the famous Elder-borer {Desmocerus palliatus). 

 But to-day must have been my lucky day, or some of the Little 

 People had admired my efforts at tree climbing and were determined 

 to reward me as only fairies can. It was no changeling grass-moth 

 or fire-fly this time, but the genuine Knotty Cloak. On the same 

 shrub I found a pair of these borers a moment later, and in the 

 little glade, among the thickets of Elder, I captured seven speci- 

 mens of this beautiful beetle in about an hour — always on the 

 under side of the foliage or crawling on the stem. I don't think I 

 looked for any thing else all the afternoon than the Early Elder, 

 and I returned home with fifteen of the beetles. Once I knew 

 -where and when to look for the Elder-borer, it became a common 

 capture. That season I took over seventy, between June 20 and 

 July 25, nearly always on Early Elder growing in woodland glades, 

 and generally on the foliage. It is not so frequent a borer in the 

 Late Elder, and 1 have never found it on the flower-clusters of 

 that plant, which blossoms at the end of June. 



