18 THE EEPOET OP THE No. 36 



interest among them. This year the families of American Silk-worm moths and of 

 Sphingidae were remarkably well represented. Among the latter was a very beauti- 

 ful specimen of the Nessus {Ampldon nessus). 



For the amateur collector the summer of 1915 was far from favourable. The 

 bright days of May and June were nearly all marred by cold winds. This kept 

 the sun-loving species inactive, and made your director's favourite field of collecting 

 comparatively barren. This feature was specially noticeable in the second week 

 of June and again after a spell of wet weather at the end of June. The early 

 mornings were bright and promised well, but by noon quite a chill wind from the 

 east had sprung up and the results of several all-day tramps were on the whole 

 disappointing. In two years' residence in Peterborough it has been impossible 

 for me to collect through the month of July, owing to work in Toronto. Next 

 season this work will probably not he incumbent, and I have great hopes of 

 watching more closely the insect visitors to blossoms during June and July in 

 my new neighborhood. So far my observations have been chiefly confined to 

 bark, sap, fungus and foliage. 



Very early in May the tent caterpillars again made their appearance about 

 Peterborough in large numbers. The city authorities set apart a small sum 

 of money and had some men go round the residential streets within the limits, 

 cutting off infected limbs and destroying some of the apple trees and wild plums 

 on waste grounds and in hedges where the pest abounded. This work seemed 

 fairly effective in saving shade trees about the city, but it did not strike at the 

 root of the evil as Mr. Bowers points out. I had the curiosity one day to count 

 the webs (very populous webs) beyond the limits on a stretch of lane about 

 equal in length to two blocks of city street. They numbered over 100; choke- 

 cherry, pin-cherry, wild plum, apple, and hawthorn, all affording food and shelter 

 to myriads of both the forest and the apple tent caterpillar. 



Early in May I paid a visit to the alder swamp hetween Peterborough and 

 Best's where the varieties of Chrysomela reported last season had been found. 

 These were all present once more, the differences from normal being apparently 

 quite constant. In the middle of May where some cedar groves had been chopped 

 down, I took several specimens of Callidium aereum on a cedar- trunk. At the 

 end of May I captured some interesting beetles in hawthorn blossom; these 

 included Cyrtophorus verrucosus, Molorchus limaculatus, CalUmoxys sanguino- 

 lentus, Acmceops proteus, Leptura capitata, and L. sex-maculata ; Orsodachna atra; 

 and Malachms ceneus. This last was new to me, though a single specimen was 

 taken near Port Hope this year by Dr. Watson, It is very abundant in the 

 neighborhood of Peterborough. The collection made by pupils at our collegiate, 

 I notice, are rarely without it. Last season I saw fifteen or twenty at the end 

 of June on the blossoming heads of meadow grass; and this season I captured 

 over a hundred from a single hawthorn on Aylmer Street without apparently 

 reducing the number of guests at the banquet. This beetle is interesting to the 

 systematist. It is described hy Le Conte and Horn as introduced from the West 

 coast and is, moreover, sui generis in Eastern America. The family occupies a 

 space hetween the Lampyridge and the Cleridse. I think the only other member 

 of the family known to me is a Gollops, a very pretty little beetle (also frequenting 

 blossoms) that I have captured occasionally — once at Guelph, when I was out 

 with Mr. Caesar. 



In the first week of June at Jubilee Point on the north shore of Eice Lake 

 I captured two specimens of an Agrilus, steel-blue, with white marginal marks 

 on the metasternum and abdomen, feeding on hazel leaves; and on Spook Island 



