386 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST, 



number of other works now supplemented their popular Introduc- 

 tion. 



In 1815 they had enhsted in their service the genius of a 

 Government clerk, John Curtis, who drew and engraved five plates 

 to illustrate their first two volumes. In 1824, when the "Introduc- 

 tion" was complete, he dedicated to William Kirby the first of his 

 16 inimortal volumes of plates, illustrating British insects on their 

 food plants; the letterpress is of no value now, but the coloured 

 plates remain the ne plus ultra of artistic excellence. And the 

 great systematist, J. O. Westwood, won the favour (his crowning 

 ambition, he calls it) of having his magnificent "Introduction to 

 the Classification of Insects" recognised as a sequel to Kirby and 

 Spence; and so it became and is. 



The authors of the "Introduction" claim as one of the ad- 

 vantages of their epistolary method that it lends itself to easy 

 digressions. May I close my letter with a little aside in the shape 

 of a personal incident? In 1904 I was visiting an uncle in Chisle- 

 hurst (Kent, England), and, on the eve of my departure to Scotland 

 on a botany trip, got word that an old family friend of my uncle's 

 was coming to stay with him. I begged my uncle to ask his 

 guest's advice in the choice of a good general treatise on Ento- 

 mology. A week later I got a note saying that nothing in English 

 had yet displaced Kirby and Spence's Introduction with J. O. 

 Westwood 's two volumes on Classification as a sequel. I still 

 treasure the note with its signature^-^Avebury; for my uncle's 

 friend was none other than the famous author of "Bees, Ants and 

 Wasps," the late Sir John Lubbock. 



Aeshna umbrosa umbrosa Walk, in Newfoundland. 



In the 45th Annual Report Ent. Soc. of Ont., 1914, p. 149, I 

 recorded the finding of the nymph of this dragonfly at Spruce 

 Brook, Newfoundland, on July 27, 1914. Recently I received two 

 male adults from Humbermouth, Bay of Islands, Nfd., taken on 

 August 11, 1915, by Dr. A. G. Huntsman, of the Biological Dept., 

 University of Toronto. They were captured while flying in the 

 vicinity of a small creek flowing partly through dense spruce 

 woods and partly through a natural meadow. These specimens 

 resemble some which I have, from Anticosti, being somewhat 

 stouter and a little smaller 'than usual, this being a general character- 

 istic of the species of /Eshna from Newfoundland and other localities 

 having a cool summer climate. — E. M. Walker. 



