OF WASHINGTON. 23 
is the unity of habit in the same genus in widely different parts of 
the world. 
During the year I have had an excellent opportunity of studying 
the course of the French people in their fight against Phylloxera 
vastatrix, and it has been most gratifying to see how at last the 
insect is no longer feared by those who have tried most persist- 
ently to deal with it. With the improved methods of applying 
bisulphide of carbon, both by hand injectors and by more com- 
plicated machines drawn by horses, the French grape-grower can 
measurably protect his vineyards^ and I have every hope that 
future experience with the kerosene emulsion will give them 
another important and valuable remedy ; but the chief reliance is 
on the resistant American vines, and it was most gratifying to 
find, over hundreds of square miles, vineyards previously devas- 
tated entirely reconstituted by such means. In fact it was notice- 
able that the grape-growers there were in far greater dread of the 
Downy Grape-leaf Mildew, Peronospora viticola, which was 
imported in 1877 upon American vines, than of the Phylloxera. 
Perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries of the year 1884 
is the mode of oviposition in some of our Carabida. Schaupp 
(Bull. Br. Ent. Soc., I, p. 35) states that, having placed several 
specimens of Carabus limbatus in a breeding cage on March 
3ist, he observed afterwards in the cage one larva and several 
eggs; again he says (I.e.) that in a cage wherein several 
Chlcenius cestivus and Galerita janus were kept he observed, 
on July 4th, one larva of Galerita, two of Chlcenius, and 
"several eggs." He does not describe the eggs and only refers 
to them (1. c., p. 26) as " usually imbedded in the earth." 
From the terrestrial habits of most of our species one would 
expect that the eggs are deposited within the ground, and such 
may yet prove to be the case with many ; but I have proved by 
actual breeding from eggs to the imago that it is not so with 
Chlcenius impunctifrons, and have strong proof that Chi. cesti- 
vus, Scarites subterraneus and the genera Diccelus and 
Galerita share with that species its singular mode of oviposition. 
The remarkable and unexpected fact, in insects so essentially 
terrestrial, is that the eggs are laid singly on the leaves of trees 
and shrubs and encased in a covering of mud or clay. I had 
often observed these little convex mud-cells on the underside of 
