THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 43 



specimen of Hyper platys impaled on its proboscis; it had thrust 

 the deadly stiletto through the suture of the elytra, and found 

 the soft, defenceless body between the joints of the harness. 



Nor was this all. In "The Toilers of the Sea," Hugo's famous 

 romance of the Channel Islands, you will remember how the hero 

 Gilliat entered the sunny sea-cavern only to find himself caught 

 in the toils of the giant cuttle-fish. In the hollow of this wood- 

 cave, too, lurked a monstrous Octopus. As I neared the end of the 

 pile, I saw a huge, grey and black spider, with great hairy legs and 

 massive obcuneate forepart (the thick end of the wedge being 

 forward and a pair of glittering little eyes projecting out of the 

 black mass) plunge out of sight between two piles of billets, and 

 I fancied, in the flash of its dive, that it had a big blue-bottle in 

 its jaws. I got my forceps ready and kept careful watch as I 

 turned over the billets; and presently I drove him from cover and 

 seized one shaggy thigh in the relentless grip of my steel vice. 

 Cheek by jowl in my cabinet, staring stark and stiff, are set the 

 killer and his prey, Phidippns audax and a. last specimen of Liopus 

 variegaiiis, for that was what the blue-bottle proved to be. The 

 spider had not attempted to wedge his huge jaws in at the suture 

 of the wing-covers, but had dug them in on the under side between 

 chest and body, and sucked his victim so viciously that the liga- 

 ments between thorax and abdomen were wrenched apart and the 

 elytra disjointed and loose. 



NOTES ON BARNES' AND McDUNNOUGH'S ''CHECK 

 LIST OF LEPIDOPTERA OF BOREAL AMERICA/' 



BY F. H. WOLLEY DOD (ON ACTIVE SERVICE). 



(Continued from page 16.) 

 Cirphis Walk., Roseola (1937) is probably a variety of farcta 

 (1938), and calgariana (1945) of anteroclara (1942). Antero- 

 clara and farcta are too nearly allied to be separated, as here, 

 by imperfecta and insueta. Heterodoxa, dia and megadia 

 stand as varieties of insueta, and this is very likely correct, 

 except that the first two named are questionably distinguish- 

 able forms. The type of dia in the British Museum differs 

 in negligible detail from some Calgary heterodoxa in the same 

 collection. 



February, 1918 



