INVEETEBRATA, CRYPTOGAMIA, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 709 



So far the author had reared them in small glass thimble-shaped 

 tubes, corked and placed upside down, the observations being fol- 

 lowed on the surface of the cork. In order to supply the necessary 

 earth in a sufficiently damp state for the larva), he now used a glass 

 tube '10 m. in length by "025 in diameter, stopped at the bottom 

 by a piece of sponge, and filled with earth, on which he placed the 

 " scarabseoid " larva (this word has already been used by Eiley for 

 Epicanta). It immediately buried itself, and formed, a little above 

 the sponge, a small chamber or cavity against the wall of the tube, 

 which enabled even its subterranean movements to be followed. In 

 five days more there was a fresh moult ; but this time it was no 

 longer a larva that appeared, but a pupa, like that of a Muscide, 

 having foiu* small mamillse at the apex, and three pairs of small 

 ones in the place where the legs were. It was horny-white in 

 colour, and motionless, having the appearance of a chrysalis. This 

 condition lasted all the winter, and one would have thought life was 

 quite extinct, if from time to time it had not squeezed out of its jjores 

 small drops of a transparent hyaline fluid, which remained for several 

 days on the surface of its body. 



On 15th April this pupa burst its envelope, and gave issue to a 

 white grub very similar to the scarabceoid, but without the strong claws 

 and jaws ; only showing rudimentary feet, each comj)osed of three 

 short, thick pieces. This grub moved slowly in its cell ; it did not 

 quit it and did not eat. On 30th April there was a fresh moult, 

 giving at last a nympha, returning to the regular coleopterous type, 

 with all its limbs quite visible. This nympha, at first white, soon 

 became coloured. On 17th May it was already of a dark hue, and on 

 19th the beetle was seen in the tube with its brilliant covering. 



The complete evolution of the insect thus lasts for about a year. 



The author strongly suspects that those bees which make nests in 

 the earth, like Halictus and Andrena, are the usual prey of these 

 insects, but has not yet made exact observations on the subject. 



New Genus of Cochineals of the Elm.* — M. Lichtenstein has 

 also discovered a new and very strongly-marked genus of cochineal 

 living on the elm, forming the transition between the Coccidaa and 

 Phylloxerians, which he has named Bitsemia, after M. C. Ritsema, 

 the Curator of the Leyden Museum. 



The animals, first observed in August, were red, • 4.5 mm. long, of 

 an elongate-oval form, with six-jointed antennfe. Attaching them- 

 selves in the crevices of the bark of Ulmus campestris, they lost their 

 aphis-like form and took that of a small, flattened, reniform gall or 

 vesicle, as in many Coccidae. At this period they approached the 

 genera Nidularia and Gossyixiria as they exuded a cottony mass under- 

 neath, in which they deposited ovoid bodies of different sizes, which 

 are not true ova, but analogous to what the author has called j^wpce in 

 the Phylloxerians. In March these bodies acquired traces of segmenta- 

 tion, and in April the males issued from the cottony mass. Their 

 antennae, moniliform and of nine joints, resemble those of the Coccidie, 



* ' Comptes Eendus,' Ixxxviii. (1879) p. 870. 



