16 Journal New York Entomological Society. [^'°'- xxv. 



therefore less frequently seen and taken. It also inhabits damper 

 situations. Larvae were found in the fall, winter and spring of the 

 year, but most abundantly in the fall. Upwards of one hundred were 

 secured, mostly from September 8 to October 5, 1913. On March 

 20, 191 5, a few hibernating individuals were taken in a moist field, 

 where they lay buried a few inches in the soil. They occurred in a 

 small hummock which remained unfrozen. Active specimens were 

 found on May 11, 1914. On warm summer nights as many as fifty 

 could be taken in two hours. Some of these larvae were a little ofif 

 the ground, crawling along blades of grass, while others were creeping 

 about the damp soil. They occurred most plentifully in the earth- 

 choked channel of Bussey Brook at Forest Hills, Boston. In May, 

 1914, the low meadow, where I procured larvs the preceding year, in 

 many places stood an inch or more under water, which must have 

 forced many of the insects out of the soil, for some were found a 

 short way up stems while a small hummock yielded others.^ The 

 larvae are more or less gregarious, at least during the later stages, 

 for they gathered together in captivity, and were taken singly or more 

 commonly in small groups under wood or other debris in their habitat, 

 while another species of the same genus was found in some numbers 

 under a sheltered piece of decayed wood. It would seem that their 

 life is largely subterranean, and that they come to the surface only 

 under more favorable conditions or during excessive moisture. In 

 the laboratory large larvje throve with very little care in a jar of moist 

 earth. At long intervals they were fed with earthworms which they 

 paralyzed after the manner of Photuris. But they were by no means 

 as voracious as the latter. 



The pupal stage is quite brief. Pupating larvae lose their bright 



1 In this connection it is interesting to note that Annandale, '00 and '04, 

 twice found an aquatic lampyrid larva in lower Siam, and once in the suburbs 

 of Calcutta. In the case of the Siamese specimens, the luminous organs were 

 two small oval patches on the ventral surface of the last abdominal segment. 

 As in other lampyrid larvae the light shone steadily, though it was of a bril- 

 liant blue color. Many fireflies were flying over the marsh where Annandale 

 took some of the larvae. The latter he found clinging dorsal surface down- 

 wards to floating fronds of a small cryptogam. They ceased to shine on being 

 taken out of the water, but the luminescence was resumed upon immersion in 

 the liquid. No special respiratory organs nor air-silvered areas were found. 

 He did not rear the larva to maturity. 



