438 NOTE ON MACROPLEA ZOSTER.E. 



Habitat " in floribus Ch(^rophylli sylvestris prope Seckershausen." 

 Captus Esenb. loc. cit. 



In Mus. Academiae Bounae, olim celeberr. Neesii ab Esenbeck, 

 cujus cur^ benevolent! hoc insectum cum collectione tola Chal- 

 cididariim et Proctotrupidarum ipso descripta, mecum ad exami- 

 nandum, communicatum est. 



Art. LV. — Note on Macroplea Zostercv- — By C. C. 

 Babington, M. a. 



As the habits o^ Macroplea zostero' do not appear to be 

 generally known to Entomologists, a slight notice of them, 

 from my own observation, may not be considered uninteresting. 

 On the 4th of June, 1834, when on a visit to a friend at Cley- 

 next-the-Sea, Norfolk, I accidentally captured about eighty spe- 

 cimens of this rare insect. We were botanizing in the marshes 

 near to that place, and having gathered a specimen of Potamoge- 

 ton pectinatus (a plant which always grows under water, only 

 raising its small heads of flowers above the surface), in a ditch 

 of fresh water, I was much surprised by finding in the centre 

 of its dense mass of leaves and branches, a single specimen of 

 Macroplea. There being a great quantity of that plant in the 

 ditch, we of course examined numerous specimens, and were 

 gratified by the discovery of two or three, and sometimes six or 

 eight individual insects in each of them. The insects, which 

 are very sluggish, appear to live quite under water, since they 

 never occurred upon the outside of the dense tufts of the Pota- 

 mngeton, but always in the interior of the mass, quite enclosed 

 by the branches, and not easy to discover without a close ex- 

 amination. '1 here were many of them found in pairs, showing 

 that this is their natural habitation, and that they do not live, 

 like their allies the Donaci^B, upon those parts of water 

 plants which are above the surface. Although the ditch was 

 full of various plants, several of which formed dense mats, 

 (such as Ranunculus aquatilis,) yet we could not discover a 

 single specimen of Macroplea upon any plant except the 

 Potatnogcton. 



Charles C. Babington. 



St. John's College, Cambridge, 

 Jprill5, 1837. 



