^\\t Canadian |Intomttltt0t$t. 



Vol. L. LONDON, FEBRUARY, 1918 No. 2 



POPULAR AND PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY. 



The Heart of a Wood-pile. 



by francis j. a. morris, peterborough, ont. 



The pity of it is that when you make a new find and are in- 

 wardly executing a war-dance, leaping and whooping with triumph, 

 so often Nature conspires to produce on all sides of you the very 

 rarity you are pirouetting over, till your prize is cheap to nasti- 

 ness. I remember so well the first few spikes of the Adder's 

 Tongue Fern that I found; what miles and miles, what months 

 and months of search with never a sign; but as soon as the secret 

 postern-gate had been surprised, Nature seemed in a pet to with- 

 draw every guard and unmask her positions, so that Adder's 

 Tongue fairly bristled about my path from that day on. The 

 same thing happened with the famous Moonwort from the hour 

 that I found one solitary plant on the top of the Grampians near 

 Killin. And I could cap these experiences with a score of others, 

 faunal as well as floral. 



Last year (1916) on June 29th, I discovered on a leaf of wild 

 grape-vine a tiny, light-grey longicorn covered with round black 

 spots. I had never seen it before, though I recognized its kinship 

 with the few other Lamiinids I had surprised at rare intervals. 

 For an hour or more I hunted vainly over grape-foliage, and at 

 last to my delight captured a second specimen. I was in Trenton, 

 Ont. a few da}s later, and spent most of my time searching over 

 vine leaves; a third specimen thus captured threw me into ecstasies, 

 and when finally a fourth suddenly settled on my thumb-knuckle 

 as I approached a grape-vine, I was in the seventh heaven. The next 

 two days from dawn to dusk were passed in fe\erish search over 

 hundreds of vines, but all to no purpose. 



However, an old dog, you may have observed, will be checked 

 or thrown off the scent a hundred times for once that it's abso- 

 lutely l^affled. On July 6th, having returned to Peterborough, I 



