1914 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 83 



CHEYSOMBLIANS OF OXTAEIO. 

 F. J. A. MoERis, Port Hope, Ont. 



The title of my paper may be misleading to some of you, and I should like at 

 the outset to explain my attitude. It is simply that of a nature-lover led (more 

 or less by accident) to collect some of the insects observed by him about trees, 

 flowers and leaves, while roaming about the countryside with what Wordsworth 

 calls " a heart that watches and receives." 



Of technical knowledge I have little or none to offer, and my interest in the 

 economics of Entomology is subject to prolonged fits of catalepsy; indeed. I doubt 

 if it has ever shaken off this blanket of suspended animation sufficiently to appear 

 in really stark-naked wide-awakeness. The fact is, an amateur collector is drawn 

 chiefly by the giddy pleasure of the eye; most of the time he goes about craving 

 new specimens, preferably those of large size and bright colour ; he is an enthusiastic 

 and irresponsible schoolboy, easily pleased, easily deceived. I knew a collector 

 once in England, — I should have called him then, in my ignorance, an old man — he 

 certainly had grey hairs in his head. He was a respectable married man and a 

 regular church-goer, but alas, gentlemen, a lepidopterist in an advanced stage. 

 He greatly coveted specimens of the swallow-tail butterfly. This is almost extinct 

 in Great Britain, though still occasional in the fens of Cambridgeshire. The made- 

 in-Germany kind that are exported from the continent to English dealers, ready 

 set and pinned, did not satisfy him, and at last he was obliged to compromise 

 matters by rearing some imported larvae and liberating the imagoes in his back 

 garden, in order to catch them again with his butterfly-net. Now what is that 

 but childish make-believe? Unfortunately, most of us left this faculty of self- 

 deception behind in the nursery, and are incapable of hoodwinking ourselves so 

 easily. Yet I confess to a greater liking for my specimens of Asparagus Beetle 

 since I took them on wild plants that were not growing in a garden, and I never 

 really loved the Potato Bug and the Squash Beetles till I caught them on my side 

 of the farmer's fence, the one feeding on the Bittersweet and the others on blossoms 

 of the Goldenrod. 



Moreover, were it not that such a consummation would jeopardize the exist- 

 ence of one of the world's lilies and eventually defeat its own end, I would sooner 

 see every stalk of asparagus in my ow^n as well as in all my neighbours' gardens 

 devoured by either species of Crioceris (both, perhaps) than invent or discover 

 an insecticide that should prove 'fatal to so pretty a beetle. 



It is, I admit, bearding the lion in his den to appear before an audience 

 largely composed of economic entomologists and talk from so alien a poinc of view 

 as this about the Chrysomelidae of all insects in the world; for in the whole order 

 of Coleoptera this is probably the one family that most violently flaunts its exist- 

 ence before the public eye, by its invasion of the kitchen garden. 



Is there such a thing as a beetle-fancier, I wonder? If there is, that's what 

 I am; and to show you that I have the courage of my opinions, I invite you all as 

 fellow-members of this Society or as guests interested in insects to join me in a 

 cross-country tramp north of Port Hope on a fine day about the middle of July. 

 We shall start from our honored President's old home of Trinity College School, 

 and in order thoroughly to enjoy the day Fll ask each of you for a little while to 

 fancy yourselves back at school once more. Throw away the burden of years and 



