50 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



and I have found about a score of colonies; it is in fact 'locally rare," but we 

 happen here to be a favoured district for the plant, as we are for the bird. 



Once down the bank I found the adjoining wood so inviting that I stepped 

 in and spent a couple of the morning hours wandering about in the shadows 

 of its cloistered beech and maple.' A footpath traversed the wood" N. E. to a 

 clearing partly filled with woodpiles, and close by the path I happened on several 

 colonies of Corallorhiza multiflora just coming into bloom, and yet another 

 "sicht for sair een" in the shape of Habenaria hookeri. For this plant I had 

 only known a single station heretofore, a few miles north of Port Hope, and in 

 recent year's the colony had dwindled to 1 or 2 plants in a season. Here by 

 Hiawatha I counted close on a score of plants; it is nowhere nearly so common 

 an orchid as its next-of-kin Habenaria orbicidata. 



From the shadows I emerged about 11 a.m. into the glare of the clearing 

 and made a fairly thorough scrutiny of the woodpiles; there were no traces of 

 longicorns about them, but buprestids (mostly Dicerca divaricata) in great 

 numbers and astonishingly active in the fierce heat; almost as ready to take 

 to flight on being approached as to play dead, an unusual condition for the 

 species; two kinds of Agrihis, also, were to be seen about the piles and numbers 

 of Chrysobothris femorata; however, these insects had all become common to me 

 and I was free to pass on to further explorations. I could not but admire, 

 however, the wonderful protective colouring which enabled these large, heavily 

 built Dicercas to shufifle about over the grey bark of beech or maple almost 

 unobserved and immune from attack; on a single small woodpile I counted 

 upwards of 40 of these insects basking, crawling, or settling on the billets, and 

 I brought 11 home to mark the occasion. My parting thought was how lucky 

 I should have thought myself a few years before, as a young collector, to meet 

 so fair a fortune face to face right on the threshold of the woods and a July 

 holiday. 



Next I made my way to a small grove of pines on a knoll beyond a soggy 

 pasture; here were some bushes of sweetbriar and a patch of gowans from whose 

 blossoms I gathered a few Leptiiras, pubera and proxima, Clytanthus ruricola 

 and Typocerus liigubris — an old friend now met again for the first time since 

 lea\ ing Port Hope. 



I then crossed to the S. W. of the meadow, approaching the road along 

 the edge of a wooded swamp. Right in the sun stood a large hemlock, its bark 

 glowing red in the light, and immediately in front of it were some logs of hem- 

 lock lying; on one of the logs I spied an uncommon Dicerca with somewhat 

 short-pronged elytra tips, noticeably stout across the back and remarkably 

 rugose, the ridges dark grey, but the grooves and channels brilliant with a 

 mixture of silver and rich green as of verdegris. Hardly had I captured the 

 prize when a facsimile suddenly lit on the standing hemlock; but alas! as I 

 approached over the rough, swampy ground, the insect flew and soaring in an 

 upward plane was soon swallowed in space. Have you ever fed your spleen 

 at the expense of some poor lumbering spaniel trying by a sudden dash to sur- 

 prise a flock of sparrows feeding by the barn — for ever foiled, but never losing 

 hope? I have, and smiled cynically at its comic look of dejection; l)ul when 

 cynic and hound are both in one skin, look you, the cream is oft' the joke. My 

 capture h?s been identified as Dicerca tenebrosa,onc of the most pleasing to look 



