1919 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 39 



Compsilura is now a national asset of considerable importance. It is a most 

 efficient parasite of the brown-tail moth; affords protection against a possible 

 invasion of the gipsy moth; and is already attacking in Canada the white-marked 

 tussock. 



EVENING SESSION. 



On Wednesday evening, at 7.30 o'clock, a public meeting was held in Massey 

 Hall, Ontario Agricultural College. Dr. G. C. Creelman, the President of the 

 College, welcomed the members, delegates and visitors to the institution. Mr. F. 

 J, A. Morris then gave an entertaining account of the "Life-history of a Hobby- 

 horse," which was followed by the special address of the evening, on " Some Present- 

 day Problems in Entomology," by Mr. J. J. Davis of West Lafayette, Ind. 



At the close of this meeting a smoker was held at Dr. Creelman's residence. 



THE LIFE HISTORY OF A HOBBY HOESE. 

 Francis J. A. Morris, Peterborough, Ont. 

 Part I (aet. 3-13). 



Before I was three years old, so my elders and betters have informed me, 1 made 

 my escape one day from the nursery and was caught in the garden crawling 

 through a thicket of laurels. On being haled back to captivity by the nurse, I 

 disclosed to her horrified gaze, clutched in one grubby paw, a happy family of 

 " wee beasties " as I called them — an earwig, a " woolly-bear," a centipede and 

 two " slaters " or sow-bugs, which I had collected on this my first entomological 

 trip. 



Some two years later, while staying at the seaside near Ailsa Craig, I called 

 one day to an older sister who was hurrying down by me, to know if I might 

 play with a pretty fly I had discovered on the staircase window; she was too busy 

 with some private quest to do more than throw me a careless " yes, certainly," and 

 pass on without turning to examine my playmate. The pretty fly, which was large 

 and banded with yellow and black, so resented my stroking it that it backed 

 down suddenly on the end of my finger, and I was removed howling to the 

 kitchen to have my first wasp sting treated with washing blue. 



It was from here or from Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen, where we stayed 

 the following summer, that I brought home a whole chestful of shells gathered 

 on the beach and a scrap book of variously tinted seaweeds. These two visits 

 to the coast made a lasting impression on me, and for many months must have 

 coloured my inland life with the bright hues of romance ; for, one day, I rushed 

 into the house from bowling my hoop along the highway, my eyes bulging with 

 excitement, to announce that I had just seen a crab hopping along the Gilmerton 

 Road. As we lived in the heart of Strathearn, 30 miles west of Perth, I presume 

 the crab was a toad. 



