THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 415 



and was very abundant throughout June on several sorts of blossom. 

 On another bush at the edge of the wood I found a regular colony of 

 Chrysomelians busy in the blossoms. I sent three of these to Guelph, 

 where they were identified as varieties of Orsodacna atra ; in June, 1907, 

 I found the same beetle on hawthorn blossom at Lakefield, and I have 

 taken it also on viburnum ; in no case did I find the normal form of O. 

 atra, though a few of my specimens approximated very closely to it. 



A curious feature about the hawthorn and its guests is that some 

 shrubs apparently as favourably situated as others and in full bloom, were 

 deserted and others crowded. It may prove that some species attract 

 beetles and others do not ; Gray's New Manual enumerates 65 species of 

 hawthorn in^N. A., while in Sargent's Monograph on the Crataegus in 

 some parts of Ontario alone (as published in last year's Wellington F. N. 

 Bulletin), no less than 95 species are distinguished. The results of closer 

 determination in the species of plant hosts might prove interesting. 



An encouraging thing about this sort of collecting is that seasons vary 

 in the maturing of both hosts and guests, so that often you will find species 

 frequenting blossoms that the year before they did not visit, and some- 

 times you will come across an entirely new insect. Two seasons ago, for 

 instance, early in June, we found a strange beetle abundant on dogwood ; 

 it proved to be Callimoxys, a first cousin of Molorchus ,• in this genus the 

 wing-covers are not short as in Molorchus, but awl-shaped, so that the inner 

 margins do not lie together in a straight line. Again this last season I 

 made a new find on hawthorn in the shape of a small oak-pruner 

 ( Elaphidion). Much, too, may result from search in a new neighbour- 

 hood ; in 1906 1 found scores of Lebia fur cat a (a small Carab of the 

 Bombardier group) feeding on golden-rod about the margin of a swamp at 

 Lanark, and last July I captured two fine specimens of the large blister beetle, 

 Pomphopoca Sayi, in Muskoka, upon nannyberry ( Viburnum lentago). 



When the hawthorn began to bloom in 1907, I went eagerly back to 

 work my claims, for the bloom of a hawthorn lasts barely a week, and 

 seems to attract insects for only a day or two. I had already ruled out 

 the shrubs growing in the open ; so I went first to the edge of the wood, 

 but this faced west, and was exposed to a chilly wind. There was nothing 

 to be found, and I followed the gleam of hawthorn north across some 

 stump lands to a large wood ; skirting its west and north border, I came 

 presently to a stretch of low swampy ground that penetrated the wood in 

 a southerly direction, and was entirely out of the wind. It was thickly 

 grown with dogwood and spiked maple, both of which were in the prime 



