98 
that still cling to the trees or have already dropped to the hard and 
heated earth. 
A large prune tree on the grounds of the writer which has been in 
bearing for eight or ten years, but which is such a bait for Con- 
otrachelus nenuphar that we have seldom been able to obtain a per- 
fect fruit, yielded recently quite a crop of undersized but not wormy 
prunes. As entomologists all know, the pupze of many moths and 
beetles require a certain amount of moisture to enable them to emerge 
from the ground, beneath which their transformation takes place, and 
to expand their wings. It would seem as though the midsummer 
broods had not been able to do this, as the strongest lights have for 
weeks failed to attract any Noctuids, Geometers, or Bombyeids, and _ 
scarcely any leaf-feeding beetles are to be found even on such vege- 
tation as is still green. Incidentally it may be said that for the stu- 
dent of the life histories of insects this is the most disappointing sum- 
mer on record, but what its influence may be upon many well-known 
forms is a matter of not a little economic interest. 
The horsefly, very numerous and annoying to cattle during May 
and June, entirely disappeared some weeks since, the manure drying 
out too rapidly to afford the larve time to develop. Even the house 
fly and other annoying Muscidz are comparatively few in number. 
At this writing in this immediate locality almost the only grass- 
hoppers to be seen in meadows and pastures are in a very immature 
condition, and few in number. The chorus of other orthopterous 
species, usually so full and obtrusive during the evening hours at 
this season of the year, is very thin and interrupted. Occasionally 
one can distinguish the soft whirring of an Orchilimum or Xiphidium, 
and, at remote distances and intervals, the ear-splitting shrill of the 
“cone head.” 
The true katydid does not this year interrupt conversation in the 
evenings on the lawn or piazza with its hoarse iterations, neither does 
the angular-winged form with its noisy rattle. Butterflies have dis- 
appeared with the flowers from our gardens, and bees are consuming 
the stores accummulated for winter use. But insects, especially the 
obnoxious kinds, have great and inexplicable powers of adaptation 
and endurance, and there is much interest attaching to the problem of 
their survival and multiplication under present adverse conditions, 
It must not be forgotten that there are a few species that seem to 
revel in the heat and aridity. Among these are the ants, large and 
small. With no showers to inundate their galleries and temporarily 
arrest their activities they have increased beyond computation, and 
have become an almost insupportable nuisance about dwellings. The 
black crickets also seem to have found in the heat and drought of 
the present summer circumstances exactly suited to their enjoyment 
and multiplication. Their shrill chirpings on field and lawn and 
about our dwellings replace the notes of arboreal insects and indicate 
their presence in very unusual numbers. 
