THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 77" 



formed in the centre and the sand ran into the trench from both sides, and 

 thus it worked away without a halt until the mound was all thrown out^ 

 and the pit had assumed the funnel shape, when it took a rest, after which 

 it began throwing out the sand from the centre at its leisure, deepening 

 and widening the pit very much. The time occupied in the first part of 

 the operation may have been about half an hour. 



One that I was watching, after it had made nearly a round in com- 

 mencing a pit, seemed to be dissatisfied with the location, and started off 

 on a prospecting tour to find one more to its liking. Its course was quite 

 discernible by the disturbance of the surface sand, although it never 

 appeared in view. In its travels it met an obstruction, a piece of broken 

 pine limb about four inches long and an inch and a half in diameter, im- 

 bedded about an inch in the sand. Against this it struggled until it raised 

 it out of its bed, moving one end along an inch and a half, when it was 

 sufficiently elevated to permit the nymph to pass on without going below 

 its ordinary depth. It had travelled hither and thither over a space of 12 

 or 14 inches without stopping, before I left it. It is most amusing to 

 place one on its back and watch it get on its feet again. Although I am 

 afraid the operation is quite indescribable by me, I can tell what it does 

 not do ; it does not spring up like an Elater ; it does not stretch out its 

 legs as beetles generally do, they being very short, it could not nearly 

 reach with its feet the surface on which it is laying ; it does not seem 

 merely to roll over, for when it has got on its feet it is in the identical spot 

 it was when on its back. But while one is watching it attentively, it sud- 

 denly assumes that hazy, indefinite appearance that anything will when in 

 rapid vibration, and when again distinctly seen it is resting quietly on its 

 feet, but what it did more than vigorously shake itself, or how it accom- 

 plished the " presto change," I cannot say. I watched it again and again 

 but could make nothing more of it. 



The species to which these nymphs belonged would be either abdom- 

 inalis or obsoletus, and they must have been nearing maturity, as some 

 were out on the wing at the time. I took two abdominalis, one of them 

 with a most unseemly length of abdomen, extending full three-fourths of 

 an inch beyond the wings, which I take to be a female. 



