THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 221 



difficult, and the tracing of complete life histories from the egg to the 

 imago state has been successful in comparatively few instances. The 

 investigation of the food habits of images and larva?, which is such a 

 simple thing in Lepidoptera, becomes a complicated subject in Coleoptera. 

 In the description and classification of the larvse coleopterology encounters 

 difficulties which do not exist in Lepidoptera. Coleopterous larvae are, 

 almost all of them, of a uniform colour. There is not that infinite variety 

 of various ornaments, such as tubercles, bunches of long and bristly- 

 coloured hair, appendices of various sorts, etc., which are of so great 

 assistance in the description of caterpillars ; their distinguishing structural 

 characters are very minute, difficult to observe and to describe, and their 

 relative importance and value have in many families not yet been pointed 

 out. 



In brief, the biology of our Coleoptera is yet in its infancy and 

 coleopterology has not yet derived therefrom that benefit whicTi the 

 lepidopterists have obtained from a comparatively full knowledge of the 

 earlier stages and general development. But I may be permitted to 

 state here in defense of the coleopterist that, with all due respect to the 

 many contributions of a purely scientific character, the great progress 

 in the biology of Lepidoptera is in no small measure due to the desire on 

 the part of the mere collector to obtain by breeding fresh imago speci- 

 rriens for their cabinets. This incentive is wholly absent in Coleoptera. 



Of our commonest species of Coleoptera we are unable to find the 

 earlier stages, and those larvae we find commonly cannot be bred to the 

 imago state. There is but little exaggeration in this sentence. But in 

 spite of this difficulty there have been formed within the last twenty years 

 some large collections of Coleopterous larvae, which is, of course, the 

 elementary and most important step toward a knowledge of them. Thanks 

 to the attention given to this subject by Dr. Riley, there is now at the 

 Agricultural Department in Washington a collection of Coleopterous larvse 

 which is the more valuable since most species have been actually bred. 

 An idea of the extent of this collection can be formed from a list published 

 some years since in "Insect Life", and enumerating nearly 130 

 species which could be spared from the duplicates. Since that time 

 the accessions to this collection have been unusually large, not only from 

 the eastern part of the country, but for the first time we find here repre- 

 sented, thanks to the exertion of resident specialists in Coleoptera, quite 

 a number of genera or species peculiar to the Pacific slope. Hardly 



