14 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



images. But this is not always the reason for this malforma- 

 tion. This season I had two larvae of Liparis dispar, which 

 were confined in a large, wide-mouthed glass with a muslin 

 cover, and which were abundantly fed, their food being the 

 large leaves of the plum, and their number so small there was 

 no difficulty about it, and they spun up in the midst of plenty 

 on the 21st and 24th of July. The images appeared on the 

 15th of August; both females, with shrivelled wings. Should 

 the pupa be enclosed in a glass or box which is not sufficiently 

 large to give the imago ample room to expand, the same 

 shrivelling will occur; but in this case, neither a want of 

 space nor a scarcity of food could have been the cause. — 

 Otven Wilson; Cwmjfrwd, Carmarthen, August 16, 1873. 



Insect Congeries. — Many species of insects are known to 

 occur occasionally in vast swarms, and our entomological 

 periodicals contain several records of facts of this description. 

 In the "nest-room" at the British Museum maybe seen a 

 cluster of the Dipterous fly Atherix Ibis, concerning which 

 Walker's 'Diptera' contains the following note: — "The 

 female of this fly is gregarious, arid attaches its eggs in large 

 clusters to boughs hanging over streams, and there remains, 

 and shortly dies. The cluster is generally pear-shaped, and 

 sometimes contains many thousands of dead flies, and con- 

 tinually receives accessions by new comers settling upon it." 

 Similar masses have since been found of even larger size, and 

 they are probabl}' not uncommon. I have a vivid recollection 

 of seeing small heaps of dead bodies of winged ants on the 

 roof of the great tower of the Abbey Church of St. Alban's, 

 in September, 1870 ; and a like swarm gave rise to an alarm of 

 fire at Cobourg in 1865, — noticed in the daily papers at the 

 time : smoke was apparently seen issuing from the spire of the 

 cathedral ; a scaffolding was hastily erected, and a man sent 

 up with buckets of water to check the impending conflagra- 

 tion. It was then discovered that an immense congregation 

 of winged ants flying around the tower was the sole cause of 

 the alarming phenomenon. Everyone recollects the service 

 the myriads of Syrphidse and Coccinella3 rendered to penny- 

 a-liners in search of a subject on which to exercise their 

 florid pens during the "silly season" a ie'w years back; and 

 many kinds of Aphides and Thrips are ofttimes equally 

 anxious to achieve notoriety by the mere force of numbers. 



