1910 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 29 



times an altercation would arise, when some blundering glutton (like Bombus or 

 Trichius) tried to elbow his way into a blossom where there was no longer standing 

 room. But "with them," as Wordsworth points out, "no strife can last." 



" For why? — because the good old rule 

 SufRceth them — the ancient plan 

 That they should get who have the power 

 And they should keep who can," 



— and the weakest go to the wall. 



Among the many new species we met with in these happy hunting-grounds 

 were several members of the group Clyti, between the Cyllemes and the Anaglypti; 

 of this group we found an occasional specimen of Xylotreclius colonus, and a small 

 Neoclytus, while Glytanthus ruricola was abundant. In the Lepturoid group we 

 took many specimens of a genus we had not found at all before, Typoccras, of 

 which we met with three distinct species, one black {T. luguhris), one black and 

 yellow, banded like a wasp {T., sparsus) , and a third mottled with patches of straw- 

 colour and reddish brown (T. vehdinns) . 



In midsummer heat, insects seem to grow nervously alert and restless and we 

 found the Typocerus often defied capture; they would hover at a blossom without 

 settling, like miniature humming birds, their tiny wings fanning with marvellous 

 velocity, while their flight from one point to another was of the swiftest. A small 

 beetle in flight is never conspicuous, and some of them when they settle on a 

 blossom seem to have stepped out of the infinite, and when they take to flight 

 again they pass away into a 4th dimension, as though, like Wordsworth's skylark, 

 they too enjoyed a "privacy of glorious light," but one that needed no soaring to 

 gain. More than once we found with birds of this feather that one in the hand 

 was by no means worth two in the bush; there proved many a slip between the 

 cup of one's closed fist and the lip of the cyanide bottle. 



To the Lepturas themselves, already a long list, we added L. subhamata, zebra, 

 vagans, proxima, biforis, vittaia, Canadensis, and three species at least unidentified. 

 Of these, proxima and subhamata seem to prefer the elder, and Canadensis the 

 milkweed. In the same neighbourhood, from the heart of a dogrose I flushed an 

 Oberea bimaculata, and from plants of the wild bergamot, with its sweet fra- 

 grance and delicate lavender blossoms, a whole covey of some smaller Oberea that 

 I have not yet identified. I say ''flushed" advisedly, for in the first instance I 

 did not bag my bird; indeed, I chased it for two years before I caught it (the 

 species, that is, not the individual). It is a small insect, of very narrow outline 

 and black in colour; when flying it is almost invisible, only the practised eye can 

 make out a minute and swiftly-moving shadow. You will get some idea of the 

 hunter's difficulties when I say that I found it fatal to wink the eye while marking 

 its flight; the creature simply disappeared like the skylark at the last point of 

 vision. For one thing, it has a dodging flight, like that of a snipe, and to make 

 its assurance of escape doubly sure it never settles on the upper side of a leaf, 

 but always underneath. Even then it is seldom off its guard ; if you cast so much 

 as a shadow, it is off like a trout in a pool. I tell you there was rejoicing in the 

 camp, if not feasting, when I came home with the scalp of Oberea bimaculata at 

 my belt. 



But in so fair a scene as the Port Hope "Rocky Mountains," disappointments 

 cast but a passing shadow. The place was a perfect Paradise of flowers, and as 

 we wandered in sunshine beneath the vaulted blue, over beds of New Jersey tea, 

 through thickets of raspberry and thimbleberry, among brackens and orange lilies. 



