73 THE REPORT O F THE No. 36 



among them, single specimens of Tillomorpha and Microchjtus ; and certainly when 

 I set this last and my capture side by side, I could not help wondering whether 

 anybody had really ever taken a pair of M. gazellula in the act of mating. And 

 here the curtain falls on Act II of our little drama. 



Ignoring the unities of time and space, let us next suppose ourselves trans- 

 ported to Peterborough in the spring of 1916. Gentlemen! the Wood of Desire! 

 On my first trip through this Eldorado in 1915 I had been struck by the resem- 

 blance of a certain trough of swampy ground fringed with spiked maple and dog- 

 wood, to the corner of Choate's Wood at Port Hope, where this unique little 

 Anaglyptus had been taken. It was too late that season for anything but the last 

 spikes of maple blossom; yet, though I found nothing new on them, there were, 

 nevertheless, anthophilous longicorns enough to bring me to the Wood of Desire 

 very early in 1916. 



On Victoria Day I made captures of Pachyta monticola about white trillium 

 on the west of the wood, and noted a projecting spur of land at this point well 

 covered with sumach thickets, small balsam poplar, elder, dogwood, choke-cherry, 

 pincherry, thimbleberry, bracken, and other growth : a kind of compromise between 

 the forest at its base and the arable country that confronted and flanked it, a 

 no-man's land that I have always found peculiarly attractive, affording as it does 

 to woodland denizens, sunshine, shelter, and food. Though the spiked maple would 

 not be out before the second week of June at the best, choke-cherry and early elder 

 burst at least a fortnight sooner, and things that season had come on with a rush 

 since the hot spell of the middle of May. 



Accordingly, about eleven a.m. on the 4th of June, after a tramp of over two 

 hours, I found myself at this collecting groud. It was a hot, sultry day, and soon 

 after noon thunder began to rumble in the west. The only blossom that seemed 

 to be luring insects — indeed almost the only blossom that was fully out at this 

 time — was choke-cherry, and I had been renewing my acquaintance with quite a 

 number of old friends including Cyrtophorus verrucosus, when I suddenly spied a 

 specimen of the strange little Anaglyptus of 1907 in a cluster of choke-cherry. 

 The shrub on which I captured it was only a few yards from the rail fence that 

 skirted the wood, but there was choke-cherry in abundance running right out to 

 the end of no-man's land. Every cluster on this fateful shrub I carefully scanned ; 

 then every cluster on two or three neighbouring shrubs; then a straggling tree of 

 choke-cherry, drawing down its branches one by one and ranging closely over the 

 flower clusters. By this time I had captured five specimens; then I hunted over 

 most of the choke-cherry towards the outer end of the promontory, and drew an 

 absolute blank; then I came back towards the wood on a more northerly line, still 

 unsuccessfully, till I reached the fence on the skirts of the wood proper; here in a 

 large tree of choke-cherry I captured one more (six) ; then I returned to the scene 

 of my first captures and almost immediately took a pair mating, and presently 

 (treaditig on one another's heels) three singletons. And on the instant the sun 

 was blotted out, the sky grew violet ink and the rumbling threats of distant thunder 

 became a present reality; down came the rain and I fled for the road. 



I was soaked long before I got there, but took shelter under a large balm of 

 gilead ; while standing there I noticed on the opposite side of the road a small shrub 

 of choke-cherry, which served to feed my spleen during the rest of the storm. 

 Everything was deluged before the thunder passed, and more work in wood or 

 field that day was out of the question ; but before setting off on my eight-mile home- 

 ward trudge, I stepped sardonically over the way to the draggled little shrub of 

 choke-cherry; and there in its clusters, snug and fairly dry, I found two specimens 

 of Cyrtophorus vemicosus and one more of my little enigma. The roads were a 



