1918 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 71 



1907 with great eagerness, and we certainly deserved some reward during the 

 season, for we were very diligent, and must have peered into thousands of floral 

 envelopes in never-tiring search from April to July. There can be no question 

 that it was this extraordinary pertinacity of ours that led to the strange coincidence 

 mentioned in a former paper (Can. Ent. XLI, 13, Dec, 1909). And here the 

 curtain rises on our second act. 



On Saturday afternoon, June 15th, 1907, I discovered for the first time how 

 attractive the blossom of spiked maple was to beetles. Spiked maple and dogwood 

 formed a great part of the edge of a swampy piece of wood about one and one-half 

 miles north of Port Hope. On a hot, sultry afternoon such collecting ground 

 proved, as I well remember, a perfect inferno of mosquitoes ; but the sight of crowd- 

 ing Lepturas never seen before (e.g., L. vihex, L. exigua, L. capUaia) was simply 

 irresistible, far harder to withstand than a myriad of mosquitoes. 



The following morning my fellow-collector and I had agreed to meet on the 

 railway track not far from this spot and tramp up to our favourite rendezvous of 

 the " North Wood," near Quay's Crossing. I determined to set out ahead of time 

 and look over the spiked maple before going further north. While busy bottling a 

 splendid haul of Gaurotes cyanipennis, Encijclops cceruleus, and Cyrtophorm 

 verrucosus — all treasures in those days — I was aware of a small pale-looking speci- 

 men of what I took to be this last on a blossom of spiked maple. I can still see it, 

 nestling in the bloom as my fingers approached it, and I well remember wondering 

 whether this diminutive specimen had faded or was merely disguised miller-like 

 for the nonce in a dusty coat of yellow-grey pollen. When I joined my friend we 

 went north and visited (among other things) the hawthorn that had proved so 

 lucky the season before. We both made captures on this tree ; among mine a small 

 species of oak-pruner, and among my friend's — a diminutive Anaglyptus that he 

 bottled under the impression he had captured Cyrtophorus verrucosus. 



Only when we got home, and each in his own privacy came like a modern 

 Ali Baba to pour out his jar of treasure, did we become aware of a stranger in the 

 midst. For my part I hastily turned up LeConte and Horn and almost at once 

 concluded that I must have run to earth either Tillomorpha or Microclytus; the 

 lens revealed an emarginate eye, so Tillomorpha was out of the question. And it 

 was then that things began to happen thick and fast; you must remember that I 

 had never seen Microclytus, but the book (my bible) declared the second antennal 

 joint in Microclytus almost as long as the fourth, and in my insect, do what I 

 might — by the greatest stretch of imagination, it remained barely half as long 

 (Sc. 1:). Next day, Monday, I hurried down to my companion's and had not 

 more than begun to unfold my tale of a stranger when he capped it with his 

 (Sc. 2:). We were both equally eager to compare the two specimens, and no 

 sooner had I set his insect under the lens and taken a glance at the antennae, than 

 I knew he had captured what I had not, a genuine specimen of Microclytus 

 gazellula (Sc. 3 :). 



But what was my insect? I decided it must be an undescribed species of 

 Cyrtophorus, and there the matter rested till some time after the November meet- 

 ing of 1909, where I read a paper called " Guests at the Banquet of Blossoms." 

 Mr. Chagnon then very kindly offered to determine my beetle, and it was with 

 quite a flutter of excitement and pleased anticipation that I despatched the little 

 enigma to him. You may partly guess my .chagrin when I got word from him that 

 it was the male of M. gazellula, and that the female only, it had been discovered, 

 had the peculiar proportion of antennal joints 2-4 as described in LeConte and 

 Horn. I felt, I must confess, very sceptical about this determination, and in 1910 

 I purchased from New York quite a number of Longicorn beetles for comparison; 



