THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 139 



extraordinary manner, issuing (as the Abbe Provancher well expresses it), 

 like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter ? The mystery will probably re- 

 main forever unsolved. The only solution that can be offered is, that as 

 the "good observer" has mixed things so promiscuously, he may have 

 mistaken the larva of Picris raptc for a fly, and fathered (or mothered) it 

 on the unfortunate Blistering Beetle, which has enough to do in attending 

 to the potatoes, without providing for the cabbage also. 



This beetle seems to be the most injurious of the insects infesting the 

 potato crop in Lower Canada, and its attacks cease about the beginning 

 of August, when the insect is supposed to enter the earth to deposit its 

 eggs. Cutworms, however, did some harm last spring by nipping off the 

 young shoots; and a larva (perhaps of the same family), destroyed the 

 seed in some places, by eating it in the ground, as I was informed by a 

 farmer in the vicinity of Quebec. — G. J. Bowles, Quebec. 



Butterfly Pictures ! — In the woods, near Stamford Bridge, Arge 

 Galathea formerly abounded, but it has not been seen for some years ; 

 indeed, several of our most conspicuous butterflies (notably lo, Paphia, 

 Rhamni, and Galathea). have lately become rare, or disappeared from the 

 neighbourhood of York, Leeds and Sheffield, and this not from any "im- 

 provement" of the land, or, so far as appears, any alteration of the former 

 conditions of .their existence, but simply from their merciless pursuit and 

 wholesale slaughter by the makers of butterfly pictures. The numbers 

 thus annually destroyed are almost incredible. I have known 250 

 peacocks used in the construction of an elephant, and upwards of 500 

 Vanessa Urtiete in the figure of a crocodile 3 feet long ! Galathea was 

 an especial favourite with the tribe ; a portrait of Lord Brougham in 

 butterflies, the checked trousers depicted by Galathea s wings, is con- 

 sidered a very clever work of art \ — E. Birchall, in Newmans Entomotogist. 



Grasshoppers. — Under the pressure of necessity, a Salt Lake City 

 blacksmith has invented a machine to kill grasshoppers. It can be 

 manufactured for $75. It consists of a frame drawn by two horses, 

 having an apron extending forward close to the ground to scrape up the 

 locusts, with a hood above it, forming a box open in front. At the rear 

 of the machine is a pair of rollers geared together, the upper one driven 

 by the carrying wheels, of which it forms the axle. Whatever may find its 

 way into the front of the machine is obliged to pass between the rollers at 

 the back, which, being capable of being forced close together, are described 

 as completely demoralizing the "ironclads." — Times. 



