186 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



[The first question is easily answered; the second is a 

 problem more difficult of solution. The insect is Chelifer 

 cancroides. T once found it in vast numbers under the bark of 

 a willow tree on the banks of the New River. They are said 

 to feed on minute Acari, but I am unable to confirm this. 

 The usual situation is suspended to the leg of a fly by means 

 of its extraordinary legs, which remind one of the claws to a 

 scorpion or of a lobster, on a very diminutive scale. When 

 allowed to crawl on a sheet of white paper their claws, or 

 chelae, are held in a remarkable and rather threatening 

 attitude, forcibly reminding one of the attitude of a scorpion, 

 a resemblance which the general structure of the creature 

 serves to increase, and 'indeed which induced Dr. Leach to 

 arrange it with the scorpions, and in close proximity with the 

 spiders. Still we have to deal with its strange propensity to 

 settle itself on the legs of flies. It is of course very natural 

 to suppose that these flies, having a decided weakness for 

 settling on the trimks of willows, and that these scorpion-like 

 creatures having a similar weakness for the toes of a fly 

 should fix themselves thereupon ; still there is something 

 that requires explanation. — Edward Newman.] 



Henri/ Reeks. — Hylesinus Fraxini. — I found the enclosed 

 larvae and perfect beetles feeding just beneath the bark of 

 young ash-trees. Can you kindly give me any information 

 respecting them ? Their great abundance must do the trees 

 some hai'm. 



[The beetles are Hylesinus Fraxini. They have long been 

 known as injurious to ash-trees, but more particularly to young 

 ones : as the trees grow older the effect is less marked, and 

 on old trees the injury is scarcely perceptible. Painting the 

 trees with turpentine has been effacacious on a small scale ; 

 but it is the more general practice to let the trees outgrow the 

 disorder. I have particularly noticed the partiality shown by 

 the Hylesinus for those young trees which have been 

 previously weakened by the attacks of Zeuzera ^Esculi, 

 presenting a parallel case to that of Scolytus destructor and 

 Xyleutes Cossus, the attacks of the moths being almost 

 invariably followed or accompanied by that of the beetles. — 

 Edward Newman.'] 



A. L. S. — Mangold Wiirzel Beetle. — I adopt the term 

 "beetle" because the little creature is so named by the 



