THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 39 



mediately spied another specimen, this time on a poplar billet; 

 then I found 2 more, and by the time I had made the round of the 

 pile I had captured 10; before I returned home I had taken 29 

 specimens, all from the top layer of billets. 



Generally the insects kept perfectly still and submitted to 

 capture rather than allow themselves to be disturbed, simply 

 crouching as flat as they could lie in the form where they were 

 resting. If, however, they decided, like a startled hare, to make 

 a sudden dash for it, they very rarely released their hold at the 

 edge of a billet. Occasionally one's attempt to pinch them up 

 from the billet between finger and thumb was a failure; and usually 

 if you thought to drop them into the killing-bottle by simply 

 opening finger and thumb, they declined to humour you, but would 

 run rapidly up your finger in a spiral and elude pursuit. I found 

 it best, whether using a pair of forceps or just the naked hand, to 

 jar them quite sharply in the instant of opening the jaws that held 

 them, so that they fell into the bottle. The insect proved to be 

 Hyperplatys aspersa and apparently was emerging from the bark 

 of the poplar; I thought at first the wood was the American aspen, 

 but later I found the stumps from which it had been cut and they 

 were all balsam poplar or balm-of-Gilead. I have since found the 

 beetle very abundant on newly cut poplar of this species, and oc- 

 casionally on living trees; it is also fairly abundant on staghorn 

 sumach. No doubt the few specimens I had found on grape-vine 

 were really waifs and strays from one of these two trees. 



This being the first time I had ever seen Hyperplatys at 

 home (so to say), I determined to take all I could get in case the 

 find should prove a lucky haul unlikely to recur. On the 9th and 

 11th, I secured 22 and 33 specimens respectively; and it was on 

 this latter date that I tried turning over every billet in the 2nd and 

 3rd layers as well as the top. Had the result been merely to in- 

 crease the total of captures, the experiment would not have been 

 worth repeating. But on taking a billet from the 3rd layer, I dis- 

 covered nestling snugly up against one of the blackened furrows 

 in the area of a branch-axil, a dusky grey insect that at first I 

 took for a crouching" spider. So well had it chosen its station, 

 that but for a certain symmetry about the little patch of grey and 



