12 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



1 shall never forget the time and the place that I first found this 

 beetle — Blepharida rhois; for I got that day several treasures — this 

 new beetle, a new fern (the ebony spleenwort) , the rock selaginella, 

 a new tree (the red cedar) and a new shrub (the Canada Sumach), 



We are now on our way home. First we strike south-west for 

 a couple of miles, through fields and woods; just before w r e reach 

 the Sowden farm, we pass through some stumps of basswood, round 

 whose base a sheaf of leafy twigs has sprouted. On these leaves 

 I have found a smallish wedge-shaped beetle, reddish-brown in 

 colour, with some small, darker marks on it; its surface is peculiarly 

 striated lengthwise by alternate furrows and ridges. It is called 

 Ociontola rubra, a leaf miner, feeding between the upper and the 

 under surfaces of leaves and often in the larval stage very abundant 

 on basswood; it is the only representative of Tribe XI known 

 to me. 



At the Sowden farm we turn west on the old York coach road 

 from Toronto to Kingston and pass presently through Dale or 

 Bletcher's Corners. Arrived at the railway track, we go south 

 along it to the Iron Bridge over the Ganaraska at the head of Cor- 

 bet t's Pond. Just before we cross, you will notice on the steep embank- 

 ment to our right hand a great growth of wild convolvulus or Morn- 

 ing Glory. It was here that I first found the Coptocyda aurichalcea, 

 a little tortoise beetle of most marvellous brilliance; it looks, when 

 seen alive on its food-plant, like a dewdrop sparkling in the sun- 

 shine and equally iridiscent, but this dazzling lustre fades after 

 death to a red gold. It was on the south shore of the lower Rideau 

 that I first met this last tribe of the ChrysomelidcC, the Tortoise 

 beetles. Feeding together on wild convolvulus, meadow rue and 

 one or two other plants by the margin of the lake, I found two 

 sorts of beetle — one large and the other small. There were larva?, 

 as well as beetles of both kinds, on the same plant and often on the 

 same leaf. They proved to be Coptocyda guttata, a less brilliant 

 beetle than aurichalcea, and Chelymorpha argus. I took some larvrc 

 and pupae as well as imagoes home with me and w r atched them 

 mature. These insects have devised a most extraordinary means 

 of protecting themselves. From the end of the larva's abdomen 

 protrudes what naturalists are pleased to call a forked process; on 

 this minature rack the creature's moults are spread and converted 



