THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 297 



takes a trained eye to render visible the sadder-hued and more 

 sluggish forms of all this multitudinous insect life, but it was 

 not long before I began to realize that the wilderness of my choice, 

 so far from being a desert, was a thronging conventicle of fellow 

 sun-worshippers. It was, I recall, while slowly poring over the 

 surface of a tall and stately teasle, from the heart of a neighbouring 

 berry patch, that I spied one of the first members of this congrega- 

 tion. At first I took it for a large yellow-and-brown-banded hymen- 

 opter, the velvety sheen of its elytra giving the effect of shimmering 

 wings, but under the lens of my unwavering stare it soon steadied 

 into the form of BeUamira scalar is, the first I had ever seen alive; 

 unfortunately it had not come to stay through the service, for 

 hardly had I shaken free from some clinging ropes of thimbleberry 

 vine, than I saw the coveted object hurry to the edge of his perch 

 and S3ar away -into the air, translated from my gaze like some 

 beatific vision into the empyreal vast. Possession is nine points 

 of the law, but of entomology it seemed just then to a beetle- 

 fancier the one and only point worth naming in his whole a\'ocation. 



My disappointment was quite keen and lasted for a long time; 

 even now t^ie recollection rouses a fresh pang, as an old wound 

 will throb anew in bad weather. But other sights and better 

 luck (both abundant that day) soon drove all this into the back- 

 ground. Before I left the thicket I had captured one specimen 

 of Oherea bimacidata (resting, for a wonder, on the upper side of 

 his raspberry leaf), one specimen of Plagionolus speciosus, and seven 

 specimens of Desmoceriis pallialus, always on the under side of 

 the foliage of elder, usually early elder, whose blossam, long 

 over, had been replaced by clusters of crimson berries. What a 

 magnificent insect the Knotty Cloak is! with his gleaming wing- 

 covers of Prussian blue based with bright yellow; unfortunately, 

 his colours fade; cabinet specimens become actually dingy in the 

 course of years, the yellow in particular losing all its vividness. 



At the edge of the thicket, before emerging, I glanced up into a 

 large basswood and noticed a pale yellow object apparently about 

 the size of a cecropia moth depending from an upper leaf; it had not 

 the thin, shrivelled sereness of dead foliage, but, whatever it was, 

 it hardly bent the leaf or its stalk where it hung. Suddenly re- 

 membering that I had an insect net with a three-jointeJ handle 



