34 THE EEPOET OF THE Xo. 36 



the cares of a responsible position; drop the handle from your name, college degree 

 and the rest of it; forget it all. What you want is a little zest for the day's 

 captures, and (as we shall be out all day) a sandwich or two in your pocket against 

 the noontide hour. 



We have green lanes and fields right at our door, but as our road will in any 

 case be a long one, we shall condescend to get a lift by boarding the morning train 

 for Peterborough and riding as far as Quay's Crossing, 5 miles up the track. I am 

 giving myself as well as you a treat, for this is a favorite walk, and I may not 

 have many more opportunities of taking it. But for all the Imndreds of times that 

 I have trodden these paths and roamed the woods and fields, I do not think I 

 have ever come out entirely or even primarily as a Coleopterist. The countryside 

 all means far more than beetles to me, so I must ask you to pardon the digressions, 

 which may be many; I hope they will not weary you. 



During the few minutes of our train ride let us briefly review the family of 

 Chrysomelians. There are no less than 18,000 species of these leaf-eating beetles 

 known in the world ; the vast majori/ty are tropical ; North America can claim only 

 about l-25th of this amount and Ontario about l-70th. But even Ontario's share, 

 nearly 300 species, makes a long list, the mere detailing of which would take 

 some pages, while anything like systematic treatment, with specific or even generic 

 description, would require a volume : it would, besides, be more than tedious, — it 

 would be deadly dull. Henshaw's check-list makes about as inspiring reading as 

 the least inspired of Walt Whitman's poems, and for the same reason — it's a mere 

 catalogue. There are purple patches, I grant you, and not a few, in Le Conte and 

 Horn or in Blatchley as there are in Professor Wickham's papers on the 

 Chrysomelidae of Ontario and Quebec (contained in volumes 28 and 39 of the 

 Canadian Entomdlogist, 1896-7). AVhat are these purple patches of interest? — 

 these oases in a desert of dry description? Alt first sight they seem of varying 

 nature; sometimes a brilliant generalization or an ingenious analogy; at others a 

 quaint observation of habits or a personal experience. But they all resolve them- 

 selves, at last, into the personality of the writer; it is the personal element that 

 lends interest to a book or a paper on a technical subject ; it is just this that makes 

 the old-fashioned Lexicon of Samuel Johnson or N"oah Webster an enthralling 

 romance heside a modern dry-as-dust scientific work-of-a-syndicaJte like the 

 Standard Dictionary. 



It would obviously be impossible to write an interesting account of 264 species 

 of beetles or even of 96 genera, but for the convenience of systematic treatment, 

 this enormous mass of individuals, countless as the sands of the sea, lias been 

 marshalled, like the children of Israel, into twelve tribes and every one of these 

 tribes has several representatives in Ontario. In our day's tramp we shall run across 

 at least one representative of each tribe from Reuben the first-born to little Benjamin 

 our ruler; in plain terms, from Donacia, the Eeed beetle, cousin german to the 

 more ancient Cerambycidae, to Clielymorplia and Gopionjcla the little Tortoise. 

 Of these twelve tribes, the most numerous in boreal America as well as the most im- 

 portant are the five numbered VI-X, These comprise more than 450 species out of 

 a total (to the family) of less than 600 and more than 70 genera in a total of 

 about 100; i.e., three-quarters of the entire genera and species belong to five 

 consecutive tribes out of the twelve. Of these five tribes again, two are supreme, 

 the 9th and 10th, included by LeConte and Horn in the single tribe of Galerucini 

 or Helmet-grub beetles, with a total of more than 200 species and over forty 

 genera, i.e., nearly half the family. 



