70 THE EEPORT OF THE No. 36 



Now the fervor of a new pursuit had prompted me to purchase a copy of what 

 has ever since been a kind of bible to me, LeConte and Horn's Key to the Generic 

 Classification of North American Coleoptera. Pending the return of the box with 

 its inmates labelled, I occupied myself with a lens and the famous key, unlocking 

 tlie riddles of generic status. After a good deal of trouble I worked down my 

 specimens to the group Aimglypti, and once I had done that the rest was plain 

 sailing ; the insect had no ivory vittae and could not be Euderces; it had not round 

 eyes, so was not Tillomorpha; it must be either Cyrtopliorus or Microclytus. Here 

 tlio specific name gazellula under the latter genus was very tempting, for never had 

 1 seen a Longhorn with more graceful outline or more elegantly curving antennas 

 than this; but there was no room for choice, the fourth antennal joint was more 

 than twice as long as the second, and it simply had to be Cyriophonis verrucosus — 

 oven though this being interpreted should mean the " lumpy hunch-back," a name 

 more apropriate surely for some African rhinoceros or wart-hog, or for our own 

 American buffalo, than for this dainty little chamois. 



Flushed with the pride of my discovery, I ventured to prophesy what name 

 my fellow-collector would find on the label when his box came back. You may 

 imagine how nonplussed I was, when we opened the parcel, to find instead the 

 legend— Microclytus gazellula. I was so sure of my identification and so full of 

 faith in my bible of entomology that I had actually the hardihood to write to the 

 curator of the museum explaining my predicament. Almost by return of post 

 came word that our specimen had been identified by comparison with an insect so 

 labelled in a collection to which the Museum had fallen heir; the original owner 

 had wrongly determined it; LeConte and Horn were perfectly correct, and the 

 insect was undoubtedly Cyrtophorus verrucosus. So, after all, my trouble had not 

 gone for nothing. 



It is obviously impossible in a large collection to verify all the names, unless 

 the institution is fortunate enough to have at its disposal a whole army of expert 

 systematists. But what ever-widening rings of error spread from cabinet to 

 cabinet by this same practice of taking things on trust. No wonder Descartes 

 swore to question everything, even to mathematical axioms, rather than succumb 

 to the tj'ranny of tradition; the world of thought has indeed good reason to thank 

 God for its sceptics. 



This creature captured on hawthorn has long been a great favourite of mine; 

 no doubt partly because it was by pursuing a line of my own that I had made its 

 discovery, and the work had the novelty and fascination of original research. But 

 few who have closely examined this little insect can help admiring the exquisite 

 grace of symmetry and proportion in its outline, the nobly arched dome of the 

 thorax, the bold elevation of the elytral base, balanced by the swelling fullness of 

 form just forward of the terminal declivity; on the whole creature not a single 

 bright tint, nothing startling or bizarre in pattern; the colours very plain and the 

 design of the simplest; almost Quaker-like in the severity of its garb; passing by 

 the gentlest of half-tone gradations from velvety black hood and mantle to skirt 

 of grey-drab, the whole uniform from head to foot broken only by two or three 

 delicately pencilled lines of white, forming a median group of curving diagonals 

 and transverse band between shoulder and waist. 



Until midsummer this formed a solitary species in the Anaglypti group of the 

 Clytini; but throughout July specimens of Euderces picipes were captured quite 

 abundantly in a variety of blossoms; this creature, too, is extremely ant-like in 

 appearance and even in movement; moreover, as representing the Anaglypti in 

 which ivory vittae are present, it roused no small interest in us young collectors. 



The success of our blossom-hunting experiment made us await the spring of 



