446 TliE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



the large gray Monohammus, three isolated specimens of Monohammus 

 scuteliatus, and one specimen of a third species of Monohammus^ the 

 elytra being in colour a mottle of three or four shades of rust-yellow, and 

 the insect in size almost identical with scutellatus. By preparing several 

 stumps and logs with chips and stripping the bark from dead trees, I got 

 several other longicorn beetle?, such as Criocephahn agrestis, Ort/ioso??ia 

 brumieum^ Tragosoma Harrisii^ and a carcase of Priouus laticollis. Had 

 this been all, I should have felt some disappointment, but it wasn't. The 

 place was a veritable paradise oi Biiprestids, and not only did I get J2 or 

 14 species in all, but among them several q.iite new to me, beginner as I 

 was. There were at least tvvo (probably three) species of Chrysobothris, 

 two of ChalcopJiora, three or four of Dicer ca, two or thre? of Buprestis, 

 and a black Melanophila with a nasty bad habit of setding on the back of 

 one's neck and giving it a sharp nip. 



There could be nothing more enjoyable than roa ning about in that 

 clearing, and though it is nearly a year and a half ago, it seems like yes- 

 terday. It was glorious July weather ; in the distance you could hear the 

 mourning dove, and round about in the brushwood and trees were several 

 pairs of Towhees and not a few slate-coloured Juncoes. While ranging up 

 and down I noticed on a bare dead trunk of pine a bright looking beetle" 

 with apparently a damaged wing, for it stood out from the creature's body 

 at an angle. At nearer view this resolved itself into a brand-new Clerid^ 

 the largest I had ever seen, and in its jaws was the elytron of an Eiater, 

 off which the monster had just been dining; no midnight assassin, but a 

 cannibal in broad daylight, and the rascal was Haunting his trade in one 

 of the gayest liveries you ever saw ; the head and thorax were orange, the 

 shoulders (or base of elytra) black, round the waist a broad sash of 

 brilliant scarlet, below that another band of black, then a band of gray- 

 white, and the tips of the elytra black.' In two all-day visits to this place 

 I caught five of these beetles, three of them red-handed ; one on a stump 

 with an ant in its j iws, a third on a fence-post dissecting a grub of some 

 kind ; the other two belonged to the blameless order of those thit have 

 not yet been found out ; one was resting on a rail, along which a stream 

 of ants happened to be crawling, and the fifth was just issuing from an 

 ant-bore in a dead pine, down which motives of curiosity, doubtless as 

 innocent as idle, had prompted it ; the same impulse, I think, rather than 



