THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 95 



-was speedily devoured, when its captor made another incursion and 

 carried off another victim. 



During the half hour that I watched their manoeuvres, each one con- 

 sumed one maggot and set out in search of another about once in five 

 minutes ; and as they appeared to keep this up all day until late in the 

 evening, and perhaps all night long, the quantity of maggots destroyed 

 must have been quite considerable. One gigantic fellow of a humator 

 particularly distinguished himself in this predatory warfare, making about 

 three incursions to two of any of the others. I captured him finally, and 

 found him rather to exceed two inches in length. 



After the lapse of a few days the maggots disappeared into the earth, 

 there to undergo their final transformation, when the burying beetles left 

 the place, and were succeeded by the Silpha rugosa and one or two of its 

 congeners, numerous specimens of which frequented the remains for a 

 time ; and even after the softer parts had all disappeared, I took from the 

 bones several individuals of two or three species of Nitidula. 



I never observed the Necrofihorus mortuorum near the carcass of the 

 dog, though within half a mile, in the pine woods of Ewart Park, it was 

 very numerous on the bodies of crows and other carrion birds which had 

 been shot and left lying by the gamekeeper ; and though I took several 

 specimens of N. vesfiillo, and of another nearly allied species of which I 

 do not remember the name, in comparing with the JV. tnortitonim, I never 

 met with a single individual of the N. humator or the Necrodes littoralis in 

 the pine woods. 



The question has often been debated whether flies eat the pollen of 

 plants, or merely carry it away accidentally on their legs and backs. The 

 question would appear to be set at rest by a paper read at the last meeting 

 of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society by Mr. A. 

 W. Bennett, in which it is stated, as the result both of his own observations 

 and of those of Erm. Muller, that the microscopic examination of the 

 stomachs of Diptera belonging to the order Syrphidce, shows them to 

 contain large quantities of pollen-grains, especially of plants belonging to 

 the order Composite. Entomologists had expressed a doubt as to whether 

 it were possible for insects possessed only of a suctorial proboscis to devour 

 such solid bodies as pollen-grains ; but Muller believes that the transverse 

 denticulations found in the valves at the end of the proboscis of many 

 Diptera are especially adapted for chewing the pollen-grains, and for 

 dividing the threads by which the grains are often bound together. 



