38 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



determined to give the grape-vines one more scouring, before I 

 gave up my quest as a bad job. I had three rich collecting-grounds 

 that season, of recent windfalls that I was keeping close tab on; 

 but one day, I thought, of the glorious July heat might go in a 

 last effort at these Lamiinids even if it did prove a wild-goose 

 chase. 



Recalling that I had seen some luxuriant thickets' of vine west 

 of Jackson's Park, I made my way out to the place and spent over 

 two hours working slowly round the sides of a clover field whose 

 fences were festooned with the wild grape. For about 10 days 

 within the last week of June and the first week of July, grape-vine 

 is one of the glories of the wayside; its leaves among the most 

 beautiful in all Nature, the tender, slightly bronzed growing shoots, 

 the delicate tendrils, and the flood of perfume wafted from its 

 racemes, fairly capture the senses as nothing else can. All this 

 I revelled in, but of Longhorns, big or little, not a trace could I 

 see. 



It was after 4 o'clock when I slung myself over the fence for 

 a short cut down the river valley in the direction of home. By 

 the fence, near where a heap of old rails and some brush had 

 lain, I saw two newly stacked piles of fresh-cut billets of wood. 

 They were short cylinders of cordwood with the bark still on, 

 ranging in diameter from 3 or 4 inches tvo 7 or 8. My way from 

 the fence' led between the two stacks, and as I rounded the corner 

 of the pile on my left, I spied on the top layer one of these little 

 grey Lamiinids moving rapidly along the surface of one of the 

 billets. "Moving" sounds tame, but I use the word advisedly: 

 the insect's progress had the speed of running, but the manner of 

 crawling; the creature is flat, not convex, and lies almost as close 

 on the surface it is moving over as those peculiar, flat, crab-like 

 scorpions or wood-spiders found on stumps and under bark. 



It was a piece of birch that the insect was crawling on, and 

 casting a hasty glance around, I noticed that the wood-pile on my 

 right was almost entirely birch, while that on my left — except for 

 a sprinkling of birch at the corner — was poplar. However, when 

 I came to look over the birch pile more closely, I could find noth- 

 ing on it; so I turned once more to the rival stack, and almost im- 



