THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 41 



billet; I suppose I had never handled so much cordwood in my 

 life before, but it was well worth the trouble, and I was still cry- 

 ing for more as greedily as Oliver Twist, when I laid clown the 

 last billet after running my eye over all the bark of its surface. 

 My catch included 46 specimens of HyperpJatys. 2 of Liopns 

 variegatiis, and 3 of a*grey-looking Liopns said to be a \ariety of 

 alpha known as cinereiis; I have since learned to associate this 

 ashy-grey form with the poplar, and the yellow-grey form of L. 

 alpha with staghorn sumach. Besides these I captured a light- 

 grey longicorn as large as Graphisurits, but with very strongly 

 clavate antennal scapes, and having (besides the lateral spines of 

 the thorax) 4 tubercles, a pair on the thoracic disc and a pair on 

 the elytral base. It is unquestionably Acanthoderes, probably 

 decipiens but I am not sure; this was indeed a rich haul. 



On July 10th I turned over my billets of cordwood once more, 

 and besides seeing a great many specimens of Hyperplatys, cap- 

 tured 2 more specimens of L. variegatiis and a single specimen of 

 Pogonochceriis. In making an examination of this last, I could not 

 find it to dififer in any respect from the insect I had occasionally 

 taken on white pine; but I am told that an American authority 

 has distinguished a form he calls P. salicola (sic!) from the normal 

 P. mixtus. I suppose one may be over-sensitive about mere 

 language, but the desire to clip words down by a- syllable or two 

 often combines very disastrously with our modern neglect of the 

 Classics. This variety of Pogonochcerus mixtus feeds on willow and 

 should, of course, (as any of Macaulay's schoolboys would gladly 

 tell you) be salicicola; the telescoping of the middle pair of syllables 

 unfortunately condemns the insect to durance vile in a salt-mine! 

 There is an even more terrible example of what grammarians call 

 "solecism" in the science of botany; I recall the delicious piece of 

 irony that even gentle Asa Gray was goaded into o\'er this bar- 

 barism : it appears that the man who discovered a kind of holly with 

 blossoms set on long, thread-like stalks, wishing to name and de- 

 scribe his find in a single breath, christened it ''Nemopanthe" un- 

 der the fond delusion that this would mean "thread-stalk blossom;" 

 he should, however, have called it ^' Nemato-pod-anthe," and the 

 portmanteau word that he perpetrated was too much even for the 

 sweet-tempered father of American botany. The vein of irony is 



