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young trees in extraordinary numbers. The result is that many trees 

 two inches or less in diameter, planted in 1893, are dead this season. 

 The strip of affected timber is about one and oue-half miles long and 

 skirts the bank of the Missouri River. Fortunately many of the speci- 

 mens received were pierced with the exit holes of some hymenopterous 

 parasite. This adds another to the already large list of insects afiect- 

 ing young trees on tree claims in the West. 



THE SPIDER WHICH BITES. 



The spider mentioned in the stories told by Dr. E. E. Corson, in his 

 lengthy letter published in Insect Life (vol. i, p. 280-2), has never 

 been determined. We hazarded the guess that the privy-inhabiting 

 species might have belonged to either of the genera Amaurobius or 

 Cielotes, or possibly to Tegeuaria, Pholcus, or Dictyiia. The well-known 

 habits of Latrodectus mactans, however, seemed to indicate that it could 

 not be the species the bite of which brought about such serious results 

 in the cases mentioned by Dr. Corson. We have recently received a 

 letter, however, from Mr. Frank M. Jones, of Wilmington, Del., with 

 which he transmitted specimens of a spider which he captured in an 

 irregularly spun web a few inches below the level of the seat in a privy 

 at Milledgeville, Baldwin County, Ga. This insect proved to be Latro- 

 dectus mactans^ and, in view of this direct evidence, it seems likely that 

 in some at least of the cases described by Dr. Corson this species was 

 concerned. 



PSEUDOPARASITIC HAIRS OF TACHINIDS. 



M. A. Giard, at a meeting of the Societe Entomologique de France 

 of April 25, presented a short communication on the subject above 

 mentioned. He said that at the previous meeting he had exhibited a 

 Tachina fly {Exorista excavata) which carried certain bizarre append- 

 ages, the nature of which was problematical. Later examination, how- 

 ever, indicated that they were hairs of a bombycid caterpillar, probably 

 of the genus Chelonia. He shows that Girschuer had mistaken similar 

 objects for specialized macrochetse, while Mik had recognized in another 

 case the hairs of Chelonia rillica. This reminds us that upon one occa- 

 sion we gave a small hymenopterous insect to an artist to figure, and 

 when the preliminary sketch was completed we were surprised to find 

 two very curious barbed hairs represented as proceeding symmetrically 

 from the hind femora. We examined the specimen and found that the 

 artist had depicted what was really present, but the peculiar hairs 

 were undoubtedly those-of a dermestid larva and formed no part of the 

 insect itself. 



CICADA CHIMNEYS. 



We had the pleasure in August of listening to a paper read by Dr. 

 J. A. Lintner before Section F of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, on the subject of the remarkable structures 



