26 THE REPORT OF THE No. 36 



which frequents blossoms all July, especially those of New" Jersey tea and milkweed, 

 though often met with also on certain of the Rosasese and composites. It closely 

 resembles Cyrtophorus, though considerably smaller and not so elegant in form; 

 on the side of each elytron is a transverse white band, technically termed an ivory 

 vitta; in the first specimens captured I did not recognize a new kind till I took 

 them out of the killing-bottle. 



This finding of a new species acts as a great incentive to the collector, not 

 merely through the stimulus and encouragement of filling gaps in his cabinet, 

 but through the interest and education of comparing closely-allied species and 

 genera, and gradually following out the relationship of distinct tribes as the series 

 of intermediate forms grows more and more continuous ; thus retracing, as it were, 

 the steps of natural evolution. It was, I know, a great encouragement to me to 

 find the wide gap between, say, the Cyllenes and the Lepturas being gradually 

 filled in and the various stages of the transition emerging, so to say, from the un- 

 known. I believe it was the consequent redoubled efforts made by my fellow- 

 collector and myself the next season, more than mere luck, that brought us an 

 interesting discovery in the middle of June. On a certain Sunday morning I 

 captured on spiked maple a specimen of an ant-like beetle, obviously belonging 

 to the Anaglypti group, but neither Cyrtopliorus verrucosus nor Euderces picipes, 

 and in the afternoon of the same day on hawthorn, my friend captured a specimen 

 of an ant-lik^ beetle neither Cyrtopliorus verrucosus nor Euderces picipes. Neither 

 of us noticed his discovery till we came to turn out the contents of our killing- 

 bottles on returning home. Stranger still, the new species we had captured, when 

 we came to compare notes, proved different from one another. By a close exam- 

 ination of my friend's capture, I found he had at last got a genuine specimen of 

 Microclytus gazellula. My capture has not yet been identified, but it may be re- 

 ferred almost certainly to the genus Cyrtopliorus. 



I have been led into something of a digression here, and for purposes of this 

 paper I may remind you that we are in the month of May, and searching for 

 beetle guests on the blossoms of the early elder. Through the middle of the wood 

 where I made these first discoveries flows a small stream that has eaten out for 

 itself quite a deep ravine through the limestone, clay and marl. About 100 yards 

 up this glen grows a large shrub of early elder that opens about the end of May; 

 on its blossoms we got several more of the Leptura ruficollis, but nothing new 

 that season. In 1907, however, while my fellow-collector was examining the 

 blossoms, he spied a new Longicorn, of which he captured three specimens, and 

 a day or two later, from the same shrub, I managed to get two. Though there were 

 several other elder bushes in the wood, we have found this beetle on none of them, 

 only on this one tree, and it has yielded us from 3 to 5 specimens every season 

 since. As far as our experience goes the beetle is active from the end of 

 May till nearly the end of June. In 1907, from another locality I took two speci- 

 mens on dogwood blossom; in 1908 I got three or four specimens on dogwood and 

 on the thimble-berry, and in the season just over we both saw specimens feeding 

 on hawthorn blossoms. It is the Pachyta monticola, a very pretty insect with 

 pale yellow elytra, boldly marked with black or deep crimson. This genus is 

 closely related to the Lepturas, but broader across the base of the el3^ra, and 

 thicker through the sternum; its thorax, too, instead of being rounded at the 

 sides, is armed with an excrescence known to Coleopterists as a "process." In 1907 

 and 1908 I succeeded in capturing a few specimens of two more species of Pachyta, 

 smaller than monticola, and inconspicuous in colour, black, or black with dark 



