25!^ THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST, 



readily be believed that this plant is an important factor in the distribution 

 of certain species of Coleoptera. Thus I found lurking in this fungus 

 Cucujus clavipes, a beetle that is usually rather fastidious in the selection 

 of its abiding place, and which in regions where the basswood, with its 

 loose, thin layers of inner bark, flourishes, will rarely be found elsewhere 

 than in dead logs of this tree. The ubiquitous species of Trogosita are 

 frequent visitors, as might be expected from their predatory habits, and 

 other members of the family, as TemnocJiila virescens, Peltis and Calitys, 

 were also seen, and in their company the tenebrionid, Phellopsis poi'cata. 

 These, however, are genera which affect the neighborhood of coriaceous 

 bark fungi everywhere, and their presence in this society is quite a matter 

 of course. The rare tenebrionid, Bins estriatus, of which a single pair, 

 presumably male and female,, was captured in the cavity of one of these 

 fungi, would seem to be a casual visitor only, as its attenuated, cylindrical 

 form is adapted to threading the galleries of Scolytida? and other bark- 

 boring insects. Other insects, which for want of better knowledge may 

 also be considered intruders, were an undescribed species of Odontosphindus 

 in the imago, and a considerable number of unknown but probably pre- 

 datory larvse, including that of Trogosita and a clerid, which in the 

 present state of our knowledge of coleopterous larvae it would be useless 

 to examine. 



Aradus debilis, Uhler, an extremely thin and flattened hemipteron, 

 swarms in and about the fungus, and evidently finds the cavity a favourable 

 place of deposit for its eggs. A multitude of its young heaved and 

 tumbled the dust within nearly every fungus. All ages were represented 

 there, but the adult bugs seem to prefer the heat and warmth of the sun, 

 and are found on the bark of conifers infested with the fungus. Their 

 bodies, especially when immature, are particularly well adapted to trans- 

 port the spores of a fungus. Everything in the nature of dust clings to 

 them, and I have no doubt they constitute one of the most reliable 

 propagators of the plant. 



Perhaps the most interesting of the inhabitants is the Nitidulid beetle 

 Epiircea >nonogaina, discovered by Crotch, and described by him in 1874. 

 He says of it : " Found in Vancouver and throughout the Sierra Nevada 

 in the small white globular fungus which occurs on dead pines. This 

 will be found to have a hole underneath, and if carefully detached a pair 

 of the above insects will generally be found, unless a marauding Trogosita 



