04 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



on the summit a beautiful rose-coloured pubescence. I watched them 

 till they were mature and had the satisfaction of seeing them deveiope into 

 two fine galls of this not very common species. 



My friend, Mr. L. S. "White, of this city, like a true chemist, as he is, 

 suggested the idea of weighing the specimens of new insects we describe 

 and tried his plan upon the gall flies taken the other day. The species 

 taken on the buds of C. q. cJ>e?'ato?' weighed 4}4 milligrammes, while 

 another species, probably C. q. globulus, Harris, weighed alive 18 mille- 

 grammes. This last was taken on a bud of the White Oak. 



Slowly, year by year, the above and other quite as interesting fragments 

 in the history of the Cynipidae have come to my knowledge, and I hope 

 to live to see their history fully written. It is in such investigations of 

 the habits of insects that our real work and our highest enjoyment as 

 Entomologists consists. 



A GLIMPSE OF INSECT LIFE. 



BY PROFESSOR BELL, OF BELLEVILLE. 



While looking over some old memoranda a few days ago, I found the 

 following, which may prove interesting to the readers of the Entomologist: 



In the summer of the year 1S30, while residing in the northern part of 

 the County of Northumberland, England, in the capacity of a farm 

 student, I was requested to carry out a sentence of death upon a worth- 

 less cur, which had been condemned as an incorrigible cattle chaser. 

 After the execution, I dragged the carcass across some fields to a small 

 clump of Willows near the river Till, and deposited it as an insect trap in 

 a hollow, which, from having been long under water, was devoid of vege- 

 tation. In a short time the decomposing carcass became the resort of an 

 immense crowd of the common Blow-fly, Musca carnifex, under whose 

 manipulations it soon became a seething mass of the largest, fattest and 

 liveliest of maggots. It also attracted a number of the Silphidae, 

 especially Nccrophorus humator, N. vespillo, and Necrodes littoralis. After 

 capturing as many specimens of these insects as I wanted, I was much 

 interested in observing their proceedings. About forty of them had 

 established a sort of encampment under the vertical wall of the hole, 

 about thirty inches from the carcass, to which each individual ever and 

 anon made a raid and captured a fine fat maggot, which he bore off 

 writhing and wriggling in his mandibles to the camping ground, where it 



