226 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Beetles of New England and Their Kind ; a guide to know them 

 readily. By Edward Knobel. Boston : Bradlee Whidden, i8 Arch 

 street. (Price, 50 cents.) 



Every collector of insects naturally desires to obtain the names of 



the specimens that he has procured. Any work that will help him in 



this respect is to be welcomed, and no doubt many a beginner will be 



glad to know of this cheap " Guide to Beetles," whose brief descriptions 



and hundreds of wood cuts will enable him to identify many of the 



conspicuous specimens that he meets with. It is a praiseworthy attempt 



to popularize the collecting of insects, and will, we trust, encourage many 



after they have found out the names to go on and study the life-history 



and structure of these interesting creatures. It implies a singular want 



of care to find that so many of the names are incorrectly spelt, when 



a reference to Henshaw's List would so easily have prevented a defect of 



this kind. 



NOTES ON BUTTERFLIES. 



Years ago, wlien Mr. Edwards made his interesting experiments' with 

 chrysalids of Phyciodes tharos by exposing them to a low degree of 

 temperature, artificially produced, the results obtained in the way of 

 suffusion in the butterflies emerging from them led one to look for like 

 results from similar out-of-door exposure. The climatic conditions this 

 year in this locality were especially favourable for such results. A period 

 of unprecedented heat, from May 13-18, was followed by a cold wave of 

 a week's duration, accompanied by two frosts. 



On the second of June I found a specimen of P. tharos fresh from 

 the chrysalis and much suffused, the ground colour of the wings above 

 being almost black, with a thin sprinkling of orange-coloured scales and 

 two or three orange-coloured spots near the base of each, and a sub- 

 marginal row of orange-coloured crescents on the secondaries. It is 

 considerably darker than any figured by Mr. Edwards on Plate II. of 

 Phyciodes in his " Butterflies of North America." The capture is 

 interesting, as the specimen must have been in the chrysalis state during 

 the cold period. 



On the 30th of May I took a fresh specimen of Feniseca Tarquinius 

 in Maiden, and another on the 17th of June in Wollaston. Both of these 

 localities are within three miles of Boston. So far as I know these are 

 the first instances of its capture in Mass., east of the Connecticut River 

 valley . 



