300 Forty-first Report on the State Museum. 



that time, ou dead leaves, and ou, aud under, small stones on tlie 

 ground beneath alders skirting the roadside that had been skeleton- 

 ized in the same manner and to the same extent as has been described. 

 The insect was not then determined, but as now recalled, there can 

 be no doubt but that it was Haltica himarginata, operating even more 

 severely and over a more extended territorj' than as observed the 

 present year. 



The fungus was described by the State Botanist as a new species, 

 in the 32c? Report on the N. Y. State Museum of Natural History, 1879, 

 page 44, under the name of Sporoti'ichum larvatum. 



The Pupae and their Pupation. 



None of the pupse could be found in the alder clump under or 

 among the fallen material, or beneath the stones, or in the ground; 

 but on passing to some large bowlders three or four rods distant, and 

 lifting a thin coating of moss that had accumulated on their top, a 

 few of the pupse were discovered beneath. On further searching, 

 their regular habitat was disclosed, in the mossy and black vegetable 

 mold margining a large rock partly imbedded in the soil. Hundreds 

 of the pupae were here brought to light, lying loosely in the mold, 

 without the slightest indication of a cocoon or even a cell, at the 

 depth of about an inch from the surface, and for the most part, about 

 the same distance from the rock. Associated with them were a few 

 of the larvae which had not yet undergone their change, and also two 

 specimens of the newly transformed beetle. Larvae, pupae, and 

 imagines, thus associated, gave evidence of an unusually short joeriod 

 of pupation. 



Dr. Packard {loc. cit.) has described the pupa as white. The descrip- 

 tion may have been drawn from alcoholic specimens, or from an 

 example that had just undergone its pupation, for of the large number 

 collected by me at this time from their bed of vegetable soil, and on 

 the point of disclosing the imago, all were conspicuously yellow. 



Pupae were jDlaced in mold and taken to Albany, where they gave 

 out the beetles from Au^-ust tenth to seventeenth. From the larval 

 collections made, as before mentioned, hardly any progressed to the 

 pupal state, but died at intervals, after ceasing to feed. 



Is it an European Species ? 

 It is probable that Haltica himarginata of Say — the H. alni of Harris, 

 may prove to be identical with the H. alni Fabr., of Europe. In the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Cambridge, Mass., are examples 

 of the last named insect, in the pupa and imago, which seemed to me 

 (without H. bimarginata at hand for comparison) to be the same as our 



