1910 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 25 



the back ; on the hawthorn, however, where the female was in preponderance, I more 

 than once found a pair. The same mistake appears to have made its way into 

 print, and the two sexes were at one time assigned to distinct species, the male 

 figuring as Hoplia tristis, and the female as Iloplia trifasciata. I found also 

 on this clump of elder a few specimens of one of our earliest Lepturas, L. ruficoUisj 

 and, by way of a new illustration to the old adage that " it never rains but it 

 pours," three specimens of M'hat at first I took to be an ant, till on looking closer 

 I saw the straight line down the back formed by the suture of the wing-covers 

 and the gracefully curving antenna? that mark the Longicorn beetle. It was quite 

 new to me, and my fellow-collector, though several seasons older than I, had 

 nothing like it in his collection. There was nothing specially remarkable about its 

 colour, which was blackish or dark gray, relieved by some transverse pencilled 

 lines of white, and it was only 1-3 of an inch in length, but there was an elegance 

 of form and outline that made it long a' favourite in my little collection. This 

 enthusiasm in a grown man doubtless seems absurd to the uninitiated, and I 

 must admit, somewhat ruefulty, that I found myself an object of pity rather than 

 envy when I "talked beetles" to a brother of mine who has misspent the last 20 

 years of his life tiger-hunting in Madras and bagging lions in Ehodesia, in fact, 

 generally making ducks and drakes of all his golden opportunities to collect rare 

 Longicorns from tropical blossoms. 



In the identification of this insect occurred an episode that I hope Dr. Bethune 

 will pardon me for introducing here. At the close of this season of 1906 I pur- 

 chased a copy of LeConte & Horn's key to the genera of N". A. Coleoptera. By a 

 somewhat rough process of elimination I had decided my beetle belonged some- 

 where in the tribe Clytini, whose most familiar representative is probably the famous 

 sugar-maple borer, Plagionotus speciosus. LeConte & Horn's book made it prob- 

 able that in the third group of this tribe, the Anaglypti, it would find its place. 

 This group contains four genera, Mioi'odytus, Cyrtophoi^us, Tilloniorpha, and 

 Euderces. Only one of these genera was at all known to me, and that from a 

 single species {Euderces picipes) somewhat resembling the subject of my examina- 

 tion. I found first of all that the beetle I was trying to place had no ivory marks 

 on the elytra, which put Euderces out of the question; the eyes were oblique and 

 emarginate instead of round, which excluded Tilloniorpha ; it must be either Micro- 

 clytu^ or Cyrtophoru^, and the book gave one no choice, for in Microclytus the 

 second joint of the antennae was equal to the fourth, while in Cyrtophorus the second 

 joint was much shorter, as it obviously was in my specimens. My fellow-collector 

 had already sent a box of unidentified specimens to Guelph to be named, and when 

 they came back I was naturally eager to learn the result. To my chagrin I found 

 my little favourite christened Microclytus gazellula. This so mystified me that 

 at last I wrote to Dr. Bethune, explaining the quandary I was in. To my great 

 relief I got an immediate reply, that the beetle sent him had been identified 

 from a cabinet specimen named by an older collector. LeConte & Horn were 

 right, my beetle was Cyrtophorus verrucosus, as were those in the Guelph cabinet, 

 though hitherto wrongly named. 



I have examined a number of cabinets, and in none of them yet have I found 

 more than an odd specimen of this beetle, nor have I met a Coleopterist who had 

 captured it, except accidentally, as it were. But on the blossoms of the early 

 elder, still more those of hawthorn, sometimes of choke-cherry, dogwood, spiked 

 maple, viburnum and New Jersey tea, from the 'middle of May till early in July, 

 I have found it abundant. It is then replaced by its near relation, Euderces picipes. 



