28 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Jan., 'lO 



piecemeal. This brought to view numbers of partly grown 

 Enicsa, sometimes resting singly, sometimes in little groups 

 of five or six, while their cast skins could be seen hanging from 

 rough spots on the boards. Early in July I left for the sum- 

 mer, and was unable to resume operations on the shed until 

 the beginning of September, when I started work on a new 

 building in the shade of a big walnut tree, only a few feet dis- 

 tant from the old site. Since the processes of destruction and 

 construction went on more or less intermittently and coinci- 

 dently I had some chance to note the behavior of the bugs from 

 day to day. The colony was, of course, dispersed by the dis- 

 mantling of their home, but some clung to the scattered tim- 

 bers until the frosts came and ended their lives. 



Unless disturbed, the bugs were not seen to move much dur- 

 ing the middle of the day, but towards the end of the after- 

 noon they would come out and fly slowly and awkwardly 

 through the lane between the trees, their long legs and slender 

 bodies retarding aerial progress despite the swift beat of the 

 little wings. With the sun glinting against the coating of dust 

 particles they made a curious and interesting sight like 

 nothing else that I have ever seen. 



I was very anxious to see something of their feeding habits, 

 since the published statements are somewhat vague or even 

 contradictory. I did at last find one at rest upon a screen 

 door, sucking a gnat about the size of the common mosquito 

 of these parts, and it is probable that in general only small or 

 fragile insects are attacked. Some of the numerous captive 

 Ewiesae were seen to take juices from the bodies of dead flies 

 and spiders with which they had been provided, but they were 

 not seen to catch nor kill any of the living specimens of these 

 insects which were put in with them. Eventually they fed 

 upon their own kind, every morning I would find one or two 

 dead bugs in the cage, one frequently serving as food to a 

 living individual which was extracting the fluids by means of 

 its short, sharp beak. I saw no evidence of attack, it may be that 

 those dying of age or weakness were simply utilized as food by 

 the survivors. Occasionally I saw free specimens of Emcsa 



