1914 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 89 



Keturning to the road, just east of KobinsonV we face east. South of us lie 

 two upland meadows of rough grass, somewhat rocky and covered with hummocks 

 and watery hollows, a favorite place for the kill-deer plover; here too sometimes 

 in the fall is heard the peculiar cry of the Yellowlegs. As I was walking along 

 here at the end of last April, I heard a strange bird-note; a long, loud whistle, 

 melodious and with something of the plover's plaintiveness about it. After some 

 time I discovered a bird with long narrow wings circling at some height over the 

 meadows, and several times the strange cry was repeated. I brought. a friend out 

 with me next week and with the aid of field glasses we watched as many as three 

 pairs of the Inrds feeding, running and Hying about these meadows. On alight- 

 ing they would raise their wings over their backs till the tips met and then slowly 

 fold them down at the sides, at the same time uttering this long drawn whistle. 

 The bird. I had first heard, however, was certainly calling as it hovered and circled 

 high over the field, and as I stood under it I distinctly saw its neck and wings grow 

 rigid for a moment as it forced the cr}^ out on to the air ; it was the Bartramian 

 Sand-piper, and this was its mating call. I had the luck to startle a hen bird off 

 her nest of eggs early in May quite near the fence that we are going along. Once 

 the eggs are laid the birds become very shy and can rarely be approached. But in 

 the mating season they seem fairly tame, and we watched one settle twice on the 

 top of a fence post just north of where we are now, within stone's throw of a farm- 

 hou.'se. I was standing in the roadway at the time, and my friend was at the 

 snake-fence, his foot on the bottom rail and his field glasses resting on the top, 

 when I noticed a weasel running along the bottom rail in our direction; it showed 

 not the slightest fear and never hesitated, but advancing steadily, stepped right 

 over my friend's foot; in its teeth it held by the nape of the neck, limp and lifeless, 

 a large field-mouse, doubtless the family dinner. These creatures are very bold 

 and show the utmost unconcern of human beings. I remember being stopped some 

 years ago by a section boss on the railway who asked to show me a nest under a 

 culvert that his gang had been cleaning out ; " There," he said, disclosing four 

 little blind nestlings, " Wliat's them"? '-'Why," I said, "they look like weasels." 

 " That's what they are, I reckon," came the answer, " and the mother fought like 

 a good one for nearly an hour to get back to them : we had to drive her off with 

 stones hefore we could get at work on the culvert." 



Along this stretch of road, within the space of a few rods, we shall find no 

 less than five genera belonging to the eighth Tribe on our list. Under chips of 

 wood by the roadside in the early spring, I have frequently found a small beetle, 

 variegated black with yellow-brown stripes, called Prasocuris; on the common 

 milkweed the large handsomely marked orange and black Dori/phora cUvicolUs and 

 on the bittersweet growing over that stone-pile, its cousin Doryphora decemlineatd, 

 that ubiquitous pest, the Colorado potato-beetle; in the blossom of the dogwood, a 

 small metallic dark-green beetle that feeds also on elm leaves, Plagiodera viridis; 

 about the knotweed at the wood's margin, the pretty little Gastroidea polygord 

 with yellow-brown thorax and peacock-green elytra: while in the grass a little 

 further on I took two specimens of Lina scripta as early as the end of April ; no 

 doubt hibernated specimens, probably from the willow clump nearby, for that is 

 a favorite food plant of the Lina scripta; it is a somewhat variable species, of 

 which I have found two quite distinct forms on the willow, one the normal form at 

 Guelph and the other near Lindsay. There still remains in this tribe a genus 

 that I have so far left unmentioned, the most beautiful of all the family and well 

 worthy of the high compliment (imce the economic entomologist) paid it by 



