ISi THE en'tomologist's record. 



at the back of tlic throat, Avhere they remain until ahiiost ready to 

 enter the pupal staple. They are then forcibly ejected from the throat 



by the coughinjj; and sneezing of their host They pupate on 



the earth in dark places at the base of walls or under leaves, becoming 

 pupil? from half a day to two days after leaving the throat of the deer. 

 The pupal stage lasts from twenty-one to forty days, in colder weather 

 much longer." 



Dr. A. 8. Packard, in the course of a paper, " On a rational 

 nomenclature of the veins of insects, especially those of Lepidoptera " 

 [Psyche, May), makes the following remarks on the structure of the 

 vein, or, as we call it, nervure : — " The structure of a complete vein is 

 described by Spuler. In a cross-section of a ^oc\,m(\. {Tnjpli a en a 

 pronvba), the chitinous walls are seen to consist of two layers, an outer 

 and inner, which takes a stain and lies next to the hypodermis. In 

 the cavity of the vein is the trachea, which shows more or less 

 distinctly the so-called spii'al thread ; within the cavity are also 

 Semper's rib and blood corpuscles, which proves that the blood 

 circulates in the veins of the completely formed wing, though this 

 does not apply to all Lepidoptera with hard mature wings. I have 

 been able to observe the same structure in sections of the wing of 

 Zi/gaena." 



Mr, G. C. Davis, of the Agricultural College, Michigan, in an 

 article entitled " A few points in collecting Ichneumonidae " (Canad. 

 Ent., June), states that by trampling down a few of the bushes in some 

 spot on the edge of the thicket, where one wishes to collect, many rare 

 species may be obtained. "As an Ichneumonid comes along, it will 

 almost invariably make a slight halt over or near the trampled 

 vegetation. Tlie halt, though hardly noticeable, is sufficient for one to 



scoop the specimen with the net The why of this method is 



probably explained by the fact that the bruised plants give ofl[" a similar 

 odour to what they would were they eaten by some caterpillar, and the 

 parasite halts to look for the cause of the odour." 



Mr. R. H. Meade, of Bradford, mentions (A/'a<urrt//s<, July), that he 

 captured at Grange-over-Sands, during the first week of April, 1895, 

 two rare species of Diptera. One of these, Melanostoma barbifrons, was 

 a Syrphid, the other, PJiorbia muscnria, was a Muscid. Concerning 

 the former, he says :^" One was a little so-called wasp fly, of which I 

 had never before seen an indigenous example, and which I believe has 

 not been previously recorded as British. This little shining black 

 species about three lines in length, has the c? characterised by the 



forehead being bearded with long black hairs The abdomen 



is marked by four small, oblong, yellowish-white spots The 



5 s were black and very glabrous, without the hairy forehead, and 

 with the abdominal spots absent or very indistinct." 



"VARIATION. 



A PARK MAi.K OF Spilosoma menthastri. — I, this uoou, between 

 12 and 1, found a pair of S. menthastri, in cop., on a stalk of Eri/simum 

 ailiaria. The $ is of the normal hue with the abdomen slightly 

 suffused with black. The male has the thorax entirely smoky-black, 

 and the ground colour of both fore and hind wings is smoky-black with 



