74 THE REPOET OF THE No. 36 



in a discovery of no little interest and perhaps some importance. If you refer to 

 LeConte and Horn's classification you will find it stated that M. gazellula has the 

 second antennal joint long — fully half as long as the third and nearly as long as the 

 fourth. Now in regard to the relative length of those three joints, this is a per- 

 fectly true statement; but the peculiar proportion in this species is due not to the 

 greater length of joint 2, but to the abnormal shortness of joints 3 and 4. The 

 length of the second joint of Microclytus gazellula, Microclytus gibhulus and 

 Cyrtophorus verrucosus, in specimens of the same size and quite irrespective of 

 sex differs not a hair's breadth, i.e., in all three insects it is extremely short. The 

 peculiarity of M. gazellula consists in the third joint being only twice (instead of 

 three or four times) and the fourth joint only one-and-a-third times (instead of 

 two or three times) the length of the second point. The mistake is a natural one, 

 almost inevitable ; it is due to an optical illusion ; the eye passes in all three insects 

 along the third joint, a very long one, to the fourth, a much shorter one ; then back 

 to the second, and finding the second in M. gazellula almost the length of the 

 fourth, but in M. gihbulus and 'Cyrtophorus verrucosus much less than the fourth, 

 judges the second accordingly to be absolutely long or absolutely short. 



In M. gazellula, then, the second antennal joint is perfectly normal for the 

 group, but joints three and four are abnormally short; and from this follows an 

 important corollary; the remaining joints bear a fixed relation to the first three, 

 and if in M. gazellula these basal joints are shorter than in the other members of 

 the group, the whole antenna will be shorter. I have been able to examine only 

 three specimens of M. gazellula, and in none of them does the antenna, when drawn 

 taut, exceed the median band of pubescence, while in one large specimen it does 

 not even reach the second diagonal line of pubescence ; I feel confident this last is a 

 female and I would venture to prophesy that no specimen of the genuine M. 

 gazellula will be found (even male) with antennae exceeding the median band. 

 In M. gibhulus, as I have said, the male antennae are as long as the body and the 

 female slightly exceed the median band. There are other differences that I could 

 mention between the insects — as in the white marks on the under side, the pre- 

 valence of long flying hairs, and the shape of the prothorax — but I should over- 

 step the limits of time and patience. 



These micrometer tests were made in the late fall of 1916, and all this time 

 I was so busy planning for the next season's campaign, that during most of tlie 

 intervening months I went about like one in a dream. You may have thought, 

 perhaps, you met me, or even stopped and spoke with me that winter, but all you 

 really saw was the empty jacket of my body, a " toom tabard " wholly uninformed ; 

 heart and soul, I was far away at the Wood of Desire, stalking Microclytus gibhulus. 

 In November I bought a bicycle; in April I learned to ride it; in May I got half a 

 hundred pill-boxes and as many gelatine capsules, and, like some itinerant quack 

 gathering samples for his nostrums, proceeded to trundle myself out to the Wood 

 of Desire. 



The choke-cherry, like other blossoms, was more than a week late this year, 

 but I managed to get in about three good days' collecting in June while the blossom 

 was at its height, and the results of my campaign in more than one respect will 

 astonish you. Of this obscure little insect I actually captured over seventy speci- 

 mens in one day, twenty on a single tree, including a mating pair ; all this on choke- 

 cherry and before the 15th, but even in the last Aveek of the month I bagged a 

 belated little covey of five, three on dogwood and two on spiked maple ; the captures 

 were made at four different points on the wood's edge, over a mile apart between 

 extremes; and the entire catch for the season was upwards of one hundred speci- 

 mens. Of these I brought home over fiftv alive in the solitary confinement of mv 



