THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 441 



"SOME BEETLE-HAUNTS." BY AN AMATEUR BOTANIST.* 



Ill my four seasons of collecting as a coleopterist tliere have been 

 three collecting grounds that have most attracted me : (a) Stumps and 

 tree-trunks ; (b) blossoms ; (c) foliage. In all three I have found a con- 

 siderable range of beetle-guests, and am able to record rare or interesting 

 finds. It is probabl}' in the second of these three haunts that I have had 

 most success, but it is with the first that I intend chiefly to deal in this 

 paper. 



There are two conditions under which stumps make a good collect- 

 ing-ground ; one is when they are dead and dry, but have the bark still 

 covering them ; it was this condition that first drew my attention and held 

 it through my first season as a collector. The other condition is when 

 there is yet some life in the wood, so that the top of the stump bleeds. I 

 have found that stumps ooze sap in this way for several seasons after the 

 tree has been cut down. A good way to catch beetle-visitors is to scatter 

 some good-sized chips or lay a slat or two of wood or bark on the top. 

 Most beetles are active at night, and when there is a shelter of this sort, 

 they take cover there instead of flying away when the sun rises. Easily 

 the best tree for its range of beetle-visitors, as well as for total quantity, I 

 have found the basswood ; next to that the white pine ; then the maple, 

 the birch and the elm. Often when a stump is dry and apparently .not in 

 a condition to attract guests, it may be made inviting if the bark is still 

 partly green. I have often pried up the bark with a chisel, and laid the 

 strips thus removed on the top of the stump ; the smell of the sap or juice 

 fermenting has generally lured some prizes to this bait and trap combined. 



The season for collecting in this way may be said roughly to extend 

 from the beginning of May to the middle of July. I began collecting in 

 the spring of 1905, but as I went to England at the end of June I did not 

 make much headway that season. In 1906, however, I did a great deal 

 of collecting and gained quite a lot of experience. One of my first finds 

 was at the beginning of June, while prying the bark from a basswood 

 stump ; I discovered something like a dozen specimens of Saperda 

 vestita, newly hatched and buried in the inner bark of the tree. I had 



"Read at the Annual Meeting- of the Entomological Society of Ontario, Nov. 

 6, 1908. 



December, 1908 



