THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 299 



Next day, in order to leave lots of room for my pocket lunch 

 as well as to compel constancy in my fern-search, I most foolishly 

 burned my entomological boats by leaving my cyanide bottle 

 behind. I spent all morning upstream working towards the 

 whirlpool in a vain and tiring (or was it untiring?) search for 

 Polystichuni lonchitis, and at last about noon gave it up, went 

 again to commune with my little colony of Ebony Spleenwort^ 

 and then began my homeward walk along the track. 



Here I made a most exciting discovery: the New Jersey Tea 

 blossoms, that early in the morning were quite untenanted and 

 seemed to have lost their fragrance, were crowded with eager 

 guests in the bright sunshine. There is no plant, in my experience^ 

 so attractive to beetles as Ceanothus americana, and I have a long^ 

 list of its guests in the shape of captures made on its blossoms; 

 these were mostly of the Leptura and Typocerus genera of Longi- 

 corn, but only a few days before I had added a new find among^ 

 Scarabs, Macrodactylus subspinosus, just because the New Jersey 

 Tea was in a new locality; and no matter how old and familiar 

 a blossom is, I always search it carefully in hopes of new finds ^ 

 if I am in a new district. 



But alas! I had no collecting-bottle, nothing but a handkerchief 

 and my Colgate's drinking cup. For some little time I made no 

 discov^y beyond a variety (or possibly a new species) of Trichius, 

 and soon the four corners of my handkerchief were knotted over 

 specimens of this beetle and the whole handkerchief was redolent 

 of the strangely sweet — if pungent — scent the insect releases on 

 capture — some of the tiger-beetles emit a similar volatile essence 

 with the same sweet but searching odour. 



I was about a mile from the Glen when I happened on the 

 first new beetle banqueting in the Tea blossoms — not only a new 

 species, but a new genus; its extremely attenuate outline could 

 belong to nothing but Strangalia, and Strangalia it proved to be^ 

 Strangalia luteicornis. It was a happy entomologist, I can tell 

 you, who fitted the stopper of his drinking-cup over that jejune 

 little atomy, and a most unhappy entomologist who had to open 

 the same a score of times and coax a new capture in before any of 

 the inmates found an exit. Handling a basket of snakes, or driving 

 a pig to market would be child's play to that problem. But though 



