1916J The Sleep of Bisects 



261 



their larger cousins. This may be due to the fact that the 

 larger ones were visited later in the evening when they were 

 more sleepy. 



As late as September 11, on a cold damp morning a few of 

 these beetles were still to be seen asleep on the goldenrod. 

 Even later in the season, September 28, a few were still occupy- 

 ing the goldenrod, a number of them in copulo. 



Macrobasis longicoUis Lee. [E. A. Schwarz]. 

 The larger blister beetle is a very agile, sensitive creature. 

 They have the habit, developed to a remarkable degree, of 

 dropping from their plant to the ground immediately upon 'the 

 approach of the least provocation. In fact this dropping 

 reaction is so pronounced in the blister beetles that when taking 

 them we customarily place the cyanide bottle beneath them and 

 merely touch them to cause them to tumble in. 



On July 24 I found eight of these asleep on the iron weed. 

 They showed no consciousness of the Hght, and did not respond 

 to the disturbance by falling as usual. Here at night we found 

 that they could be tapped repeatedly with a pencil and their 

 only reaction was to walk a little distance and rest again— 

 perhaps sleeping, we could not tell, sometimes on a stem and 

 sometimes on the under side of a leaf. When the insect was 

 forcibly thrown to the ground it would not feign death as 

 usual but would immediately creep up the nearest stem and 

 rest. This sometimes happened to be only a short blade of 

 grass ; in that case the insect would climb to the top of that but 

 immediately come down when it found its altitude insufficient, 

 try several others perhaps with the same result, until it would 

 finally find a tall weed up which it would scramble "in apparent 

 glee, perfectly happy when it had reached the top. The insects 

 sleep upon their food plants and have an aversion to spending 

 the night on low plants or upon the earth. 



A typical case of the behavior of an individual under experi- 

 mentation is the following: 



I awakened a beetle by hitting it hard with a pencil six 

 times; it walked slowly to another leaf without the expected 

 dropping. I pushed it from its support and forced it to fall to 

 the earth; it immediately climbed to the top of its weed again. 



Another beetle was at rest six inches from the apex of its 

 food plant. I gave it twenty raps with the pencil when, instead 



