THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 115 



was found feeding upon a portion of a dead cricket in the vial with it, 

 although the bottle contained a good supply of living aphids at the time. 



On June 23, I collected some leaves of Viburnum acerifolium, L., 

 upon which were numerous plant-lice and a few of their attendant ants. 

 As it was rather difficult to remove all the ants without dislodging many 

 of the aphids, I allowed three of the ants on one leaf to go into a shell 

 vial with a tree-cricket, and a single ant to go into another vial with another 

 cricket. The following morning both of the crickets were found consider- 

 ably mutilated by the ants, one of them being dead and the other nearly 

 so. After this experience I did not allow any ants to go into the vials 

 along with the aphids. 



Apparently but very little vegetable matter was eaten by the nymphs 

 while in confinement, and I did not observe the adults feeding upon 

 vegetation at any time. I once saw a nymph begin feeding upon some 

 peach leaves, on sprouts bearing numerous aphids, before she began to 

 eat the latter, but the larger part of her meal consisted of the plant-lice. 

 Again, some radish leaves, with numerous aphids upon them, were slightly 

 eaten by the young crickets in one instance. It is evident, however, from 

 my observations upon the genus CEcanthus, that our tree-crickets feed 

 almost entirely upon animal matter. 



NEW HISTORIES IN PAPAIPEMA (HYDRCECIA). 



BY HENRY BIRD, RYE, N. Y. 

 (Continued from Vol. XLI, page 68). 



Few of our Noctuid moths constituting the genus Papaipema, Sm., have 

 been so well known autopically as the species rigida, described by Grote 

 in 1877 under the generic term Gortyna. In 1882 he published a very 

 good figure of the moth,* and from that date, at any rate, identification has 

 been easy. As it belongs to a group that fly readily to light, its captures 

 here and there were duly noted, though always as a rare insect. At the 

 time of the publication of the " Revision of Hydroecia," by Prof. J. B. 

 Smith, in 1899, its range was given as the New England and northern 

 Middle States, westward to the Mississippi, but it was recorded as "by no 



means common." 



The writer's efforts to discover the larval habits in the group naturally 

 brought this species early to mind, but it had never occurred in the Rye 

 locality as a moth, and the years went by without encountering its larva. 



*Papilio, II, p. 64, Plate I, fig. 3, 3a. 



April, 1909 



