92 THE KEPOKT OF THE No. 36 



alert and watchful; 1 took a pace or two forward, when suddenly it did what no 

 collie ever did, dived headlong into a sand-burrow and disappeared; it was a puppy 

 to be sure, about half-grown — a young red fox. 



A quarter of an hour s walk south-east brings us to our favorite lunching- 

 ground, a huge pine tree surrounded by glacial boulders right .at the top of a steep 

 slope facing south; for we are on a table-land here, some 300 feet above Lake 

 Ontario, with a magnificent view, east, west and south. This is probably the old 

 shore line of Lake Ontario. Indeed a few miles west there are clear traces of an 

 old beach five or six miles north of the Lake's present boundary. The top of this 

 hypothetical cliff overlooking an ancient Lake Ontario is clearly marked east and 

 west by its fringe of white pine. East of us there must have been a magnificent 

 bay, for the edge of the table-land recedes in a sharp, curve for nearly a mile north, 

 and then comes forward again with a sinuous sweep to the east. Out of the two 

 corners of this bay now proceed south-west and south-east two little trout streams 

 whose union half-way down the sloping valley results in Gage's Creek, a stream 

 that meanders along through five or six miles ot level farm land and at last 

 reaches the lake just east of Trinity College School. 



After lunch we descend the slope to a rough meadow at the foot, on the edge 

 of a tamarack swamp. Here we can examine some genera of the ninth Tribe of 

 Chrysomelians; on the golden-rod which earlier in the year was badly eaten by the 

 larva of Trirhahda canadensis, we see the mature insect; a large soft-winged beetle 

 of a yellowish colour with a black or dark grey line on the outside of its wing- 

 fovers and a sutural stripe of the same down the centre of the back. Later in the 

 year you will find two species of Diabrotica, commonly known as the spotted and 

 the striped kind respectively of Squash beetle, their favorite food (especially in 

 the larval state) being cucumber and melon vines. A third genus of this tribe I 

 got two specimens of, on the edge of the swamp south of this meadow, but I only 

 once have found it abundant and that was in the Algonquin Park, in a marshy 

 bay at the shore of Cache Lake; it is said to be rare and Blatchley states its food- 

 plant to be Arrow Arum {Peltandra) ; I found hundreds of it, feeding on a small 

 species of the Skull Cap or Scutellaria; it is oblong, soft-winged, light yellow- 

 brown in colour, with two black patches on each wing-cover, — a small one at the 

 base and a large one near the apex; its name is Phyllohrotica discoidea. One 

 more genus is represented here, — Galerucella decora, on the willow, and hifeola on 

 elm shoots at the west end of the meadow; a third species, nymphaea, is found on 

 lily-pads; some species are quite a pest, appearing in immense numbers and des- 

 troying a great deal of foliage. 



We will now walk west along the north end of Holdsworth's farm to the road 

 that runs south between Holdsworth's and a farm of John Hume, the Port Hope 

 seedsman. After crossing the road we come to a little brook. On the water smart- 

 weed that grows in this stream I found, three or four years ago, quite a number 

 of medium sized black and light-brown striped beetles that worked a new^ trick on 

 me in methods of escape and with considerable success. I was used to beetles that 

 took to flight suddenly and also to beetles that dropped from their perch on leaf 

 or plant into the tanerle of vegetation below, but except for tho Pmall flea-beetles 

 of grapevine, alder, turnip, horseradish and so on 1 was not prepared for jumpers. 

 But this whole tenth Tribe consists of Jumping-beetles and their hind-thighs are 

 greatly thickened in consequence. Their name Halticini is taken from the genus 

 Halfica or Flea-beetle : the name simply means "the jumper." This beetle of the 

 water smartweed, is Disonycha pennsylvanica ; .a much larger beetle of the same 



