16 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



MoNocHAMMUs suTOE, L., IN YORKSHIRE. — A male specimen of this 

 beetle, which had been caught in the workshop of one of the timber- 

 merchants of Leeds, was given to me on Aug. 14th this year. It was 

 kept alive for over a month by feeding it on small cubes of cabbage, 

 cut from the midrib of the leaf, which enabled me to measure 

 approximately its rate of feeding. I kept it under a large bell-glass, 

 up the sides of which it could travel with ease, falling only when it 

 got too far on the rounded dome of its prison. By some accident the 

 right anterior tarsus was injured, and the power of climbing glass was 

 denied it, and one witnessed, when it was not asleep or feeding, a 

 constant but unsuccessful attempt on its part to climb the bell-glass 

 by substituting the middle foot for the injured fore foot. It fed well, 

 especially towards midnight, and died apparently because, as a male, 

 its period of life as a perfect insect was short. "When feeding, the 

 long antennfe were always curved, and the tips — nearly four inches 

 apart — were in constant motion, though the cube of cabbage on which 

 it fed was more than an inch away from them. When walking on my 

 hand it sometimes paused to bite it. Its feet were well adapted for 

 climbing, being furnished with concave pads of curved hairs, those on 

 the anterior pair of tarsi being one-third larger than those on the 

 middle and posterior pairs. The weight of the insect, the shifting 

 of its equilibrium, and the inability to apply the pads of the right mid 

 foot effectively, were probably the causes why the Monochawmns could 

 not ascend a glassy surface after it was injured. On examining the 

 tarsi, without attempting to dissect them, as the insect was sufficiently 

 valuable to preserve entire, I made out several points of interest. The 

 claws on the last joint (onychium) were long, sharply pointed, strongly 

 curved, and almost at right angles to the joint ; the third joint was 

 deeply bilobed, its distal portions somewhat enwrapped and supported 

 the onychium. The first, second, and third joints were provided with 

 pads of curved hairs; all the joints had on their dorsal aspects strong 

 straight hairs, and on their margins long simple hairs, which curved 

 downwards and curled in towards the pads so conspicuously as to give 

 the tarsi a feathery appearance. The hairs which formed the pads were 

 curved backwards, their tips being flattened and terminated by acumi- 

 nate ovate areas. On these areas, and projecting from the outer or 

 dorsal aspect of each hair, were patches of six to eleven short conical 

 spines, inserted at right angles to the hair which carried them. 

 Supposing each pad to have been made up of 1000 curved hairs, — and 

 probably there were many more, — and that each of these carried an 

 average of eight conical spines, there must have been over 140,000 

 spines on the feet of the beetle I was examining. Small need to wonder 

 at the ease with which it went up a wall of glass. As only about half- 

 a-dozen records of the occurrence of this beetle are known in Britain, 

 and, so far as I can learn, none for Yorkshire, this record and note 

 may be of some interest to coleopterists. — Henry Crowther, F.R.M.S. ; 

 The Museum, Leeds, Nov. 19th, 1894. 



Note on Bombyx trifolii. — As the food-plants of this species are 

 being discussed, I may mention that I have found the larvfe thrive 



