550 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



when on his recent visit to California and Texas he had 

 frequently noticed dragonflies preyed upon by other large 

 insects whilst flying through the air. These latter were, no 

 doubt, some species of Asilus; but it was the first time he 

 had heard of dragonflies being preyed upon by other insects, 

 as they had hitherto been supposed to be free from such 

 attacks. 



American Cynipidce. — Mr. Miiller read the following 

 remarks, communicated to him in a letter from Mr. W. F. 

 Bassett, of Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S. " I found, early in 

 the spring, almost as soon as the buds began to swell, large 

 numbers of a female Cynips — the species unknown to me — 

 ovipositing in these buds. I had seen the same in the two 

 preceding seasons, but in only a few instances. The insect, 

 standing on the summit of the bud, thrust the ovipositor 

 down between the bud-scales, but did not in any case, so far 

 as I noticed, penetrate the scales. I inferred that the eggs 

 were laid in or on the embryo leaf. I marked several trees 

 where I found these female flies, and watched with much 

 interest to see what species, if any, would be found on them. 

 I found the leaves, when developed, to contain galls of 

 C. q.-futilis, Osten-Sacken, and with few, if any other, species 

 intermixed; and the abundance of this species was in close 

 agreement with the number of females ovipositing before the 

 leaves appeared. These galls, when found at all, are usually 

 very numerous, and on some of these trees there was hardly 

 a leaf that did not contain from one to eight galls, each of 

 which would produce from three to five insects. The fly of 

 C. q.-fulilis {found in both sexes) is much smaller than the 

 species 1 found ovipositing, I think that when we come to 

 find out the true history of these dimorphous and, in one 

 generation, unisexual species, we shall find that those com- 

 posing the generation of females are generally larger, and 

 perhaps structurally distinct from the bisexual brood. What 

 form of gall these apparently immediate progenitors of 

 C. q.-futilis may come from I cannot say, though I still hope 

 to trace them to their gall. I repeated last spring the expe- 

 riment tried several previous seasons, — that of raising a brood 

 of flies from the galls found in the form of irregular swellings 

 on the twigs of an oak growing near my residence. 1 raised 

 an immense number, all of which were females; and in June 



