OETHOPTERA OF INDIANA. 333 



squatting close to the earth, and seemingly depending upon the close 

 similarity of its hues to the grayish lichens about it to avoid detec- 

 tion. The general range of punctulatus is given by Scudder as Maine 

 to Virginia and westward to Texas and Nebraska. In most places it 

 frequents the vicinity of pine or coniferous trees, and Walker has 

 recently given an interesting account of its liabits as follows: "I 

 found them most numerous on dead stumps and logs, in a wood of 

 second growth white pine, at De Grassi Point, Ontario. They were 

 sometimes seen on the trunks and branches of living trees, but most 

 often on the stumps and fallen trunks of the old forest, and on the 

 pine rails of a snake fence enclosing the wood. They were found 

 only on the borders and more open parts of the woods, where they 

 were to be seen upon almost every stump. I have seen ten females 

 on a single stump. It is in these dead stumps and logs that the 

 females deposit their eggs, in which operation I have observed them 

 repeatedly. The female chooses a crack in the wood or an old beetle 

 boring of suitable size and lowers her abdomen down this, sometimes 

 nearly as much as an inch. Sometimes when the hole is of a large 

 size, only the head and legs of the insect can be seen above it. Un- 

 like Clilcealtis conspersa, the female of M. punctulatus apparently 

 never bores herself, unless merely to make her way through any 

 loose rubbish that might be obstructing the hole. She generally 

 chooses sound or only partly decayed wood. 



"I managed to obtain several fragments and one complete packet 

 ol eggs. The latter was fixed by the cement substance at its lower 

 end to the wall of the beetle-boring three-eighths of an inch in diam- 

 eter. It was attached at a distance of about three-quarters of an 

 inch down the hole, and except at the lower end, which was imbedded 

 in a depression in the wall, the packet was quite free. It was cov- 

 ered with a rather thick coating of a porous or vesicular cement 

 substance, which also filled all the spaces between the closely packed 

 eggs. The latter were twenty-three in number, and their arrange- 

 ment was in general in a longitudinal direction, the anterior ends 

 pointing toward the free end of the packet, but was otherwise irreg- 

 ular. The eggs are 4 to 4.8 mm. long, elongate-elliptical in form, 

 finely and densely punctate, reddish brown."* 



- Can. Ent., XXXIII, 1901, 22. 



