Vol. L. LONDON. APRIL, 1918 No. 4 



POPULAR AND PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY. 

 A Red-Letter Day. 



BY FRANCIS J. A. MORRIS, PETERBOROUGH, ONT. 



Part I. 



On July 2nd, 1917, I formed one of a party of friends who 

 motored up to Chemong Lake. We were celebrating the holiday, 

 but in a peculiar way; half an acre of ground had bc^n rented by 

 the more enterprising members of the party, and on it quite a 

 respectable market garden was in process of culture; how re- 

 spectable, you will perhaps best understand when I tell you that it 

 yielded during the season several barrels of potato bugs. When 

 Tom Sawyer wanted his fence whitewashed, he simply cracked 

 up the job till his friends insisted on doing the work for him; much 

 in the same way for more than a week — especially in the leisure 

 hours of evening — my neighbour had been carefully preparing the 

 ground for me to dig in with the hoe. But the strategic advantages 

 of his position were more than neutralized by my thorough ac- 

 quaintance with Tom Sawyer and the famous whitewashing 

 episode. I was well aware that the picnic wasn't going to be all 

 cakes and ale and that I should be expected to do my bit; but 

 justasmy neighbour took rod and reel, I took insect net and cyanide 

 bottle, to provide for lucid intervals. 



It was about half-past ten when our chauffeur drew up in a 

 spacious cedar thicket almost at the water's edge. We found 

 the occupants of the other car had stopped at the kitchen-garden 

 instead of coming on the last half mile to headquarters. Feeling 

 confident that there were not hoes enough to go round I invited 

 the only other man in our party to come exploring the wood with 

 me; he had spent 60 years diligently ignoring woods, so I knew he 

 was pretty safe to refuse; and indeed I hardly waited to see what 

 "starting-hole" of excuse he would wriggly down, before plunging 

 into the shadowy cedar aisles in a direction calculated to bring 

 me out near a big hill that I had noticed during the drive. This 

 height commanded a view of the lake and was wooded in front all 



