THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 449 



I shall carry this principle of selection a little farther, by giving a 

 rough outline of a season's beetle-collecting from blossoms. The first 

 blossom to open is the early or red-berried elder (Sambuais pubefis) ; it 

 varies considerably from season to season, as well as in any one season, 

 owing to differences of location ; but about the loth of May it will be 

 found flowering, and its season may last for ten days ; it is immediately 

 followed by the hawthorn, which lasts till perhaps the loth of June; by 

 this time the spiked maple and the dogwoods are in flower, and before 

 this last is over comes a riot of blossom ; for the late elder and the New 

 Jersey tea, both open in the last days of June. 



These blossom haunts, then, extend from early in May till the middle 

 of July. The only other conditions of time that need be mentioned are 

 that the pollen on a given blossom must be in a certain state of ripeness 

 or it does not appear to attract beetles at all, and as a rule the sun must 

 be shinmg on the blossoms ; if it is hot and calm besides, then you have 

 ideal conditions. 



There is, however, an important condition of space to add to these 

 of time. I have, as a beginner, spent hours in fruitless search over whole 

 hedges and thickets of elder and bushes of hawthorn, when ten minutes 

 at a single shrub, with only a (c\v meagre blossoms on it, would yield a 

 rich harvest. Why ? Because the flowers must be growing near a thicket 

 or a wood ; if they are in the open, even a hundred yards or so from 

 timber lands, they are almost useless. This is particularly the case when 

 it is longicorns you are on the lookout for. It is, of course, well known to 

 Coleopterists of experience that a clearing or the border of a wood is the 

 best locality ; it is remarked again and again by Bates, in his travels on 

 the Amazon, and it is pointed out by Rye and Fowler, in their hints to 

 collectors in Great Britain. 



In closing, I should like to say that by no means the least pleasure to 

 a lover of nature is to observe the marvellous constancy with which season 

 afier season these liny creatures, the offspring of a last year's brood, 

 return to their ancestral haunt, be it blossom or leaf, true to the clock of 

 the year almost to a day ; in obedience to a law there is no gainsaying, 

 and which yet in tiie creature's serene unconsciousness seems robbed of 

 any touch of harsh compulsion. — F. J. A. Morris, Trinity College School, 

 Port Hope, Ont. 



