442 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



my killing-bottle with me, but as the insects were still soft I put them into 

 a small tin box. Here they crawled about excitedly, squeaking (or, rather, 

 stridulating) when handled. On examining them after my return home, I 

 found they had fought in the box, two of them had their antennae nipped 

 off and several had been deprived of their full complement of legs. I had 

 not yet learned the advantage of laying the detached bits of bark on the 

 stumps as shelter for nocturnal visitors, and so missed a golden oppor- 

 tunity. However, there were a number of basswood stumps in the clear- 

 ing where I made my first capture, and from these I got several more 

 specimens. 



About the last day of June in the same season, while struggling from 

 a tamarack swamp in which I had found a rare fern {Botrychium simplex), 

 I noticed a fallen and decaying trunk of elm, and on removing some baik 

 found it infested with a larva closely resembling that of Saperda vestita ; 

 I took one that appeared nearly full-grown, with some of the rotton inner 

 bark, and succeeded in rearing it ; some three weeks later it emerged from 

 the pupa as the elm-borer {Saperda tridentata). I have taken only one 

 other specimen of this beetle ; it settled one fine Sunday night in June on 

 a supper-table at which I sat, a guesl ; the entomologist, however, would 

 not be denied, and in spite of looks of outraged propriety on the part of 

 my fellow-guests, and some embarrassment (not mine, but my hostess's), I 

 produced a cyanide bottle and captured the insect. 



Early in July I went to Oliver's Ferry on the Rideau, and in a day or 

 two chanced upon a spot that proved a regular treasure-house to the 

 young collector; it was at the side of a path through a wood of young 

 growth, mostly basswood and maple ; here lay a log of basswood with the 

 bark still on it, close by the stump from which it had been cut, and a 

 pile of basswood split and stacked. In the bark of the stump and the 

 log I found larvae and pupai of the Saperda vestita; some pupae that I 

 took home lived, and from two or three I secured specimens of the imago. 

 In the hot sunshine beetles lit on the log and on the wood-pile, and I 

 tried the experiment of laying detached pieces of bark on the stump, the 

 log and the split wood, sometimes sandwiching bits of bark between sticks 

 of the wood-pile. This simple contrivance of bait and trap yielded 

 splendid results for over a week, at the end of which time the bait was 

 filched by the sun drying all the moisture out. My captures comprised 

 an ^/^^^r as large as Alaus oadatus, 2ir\d dark pitchy-brown in colour; 



