286 



his work lias been characterized by painstaking care, almost absolute 

 accuracy of observation, and by a power of deduction and generaliza 

 tion characteristic of a broad mind. 



Our old friend and correspondent, Dr. P. K. Hoy, of Eacine, Wis. 

 one of the early members of the Entomological Club of the America- 

 Association for the Advancement of Science and an old-time collector il 

 and observer of the habits of insects, died recently at his home at ' 

 Kaciue, at the age of 76. To entomologists Dr. Hoy will be best remem 

 bered from his connection with the investigation of the northern food- 

 plants of Aletia xylina. 



We have also to record the death of another distinguished English 

 entomologist, Mr. H. T. Stainton, who died December 2, 1892, aged \ 

 seventy. Among his many important contributions to entomology, the 

 most notable are his Natural History of the Tineina, in four languages, 

 with many plates, and his Manual of British Buttertiies and Moths. 

 He was a founder and to the end of his life one of the editors of th« 

 Entomologists^ Monthly Magazine, besides being secretary for many 

 years of the Eay Society, of the Zoological Eecord Association, and ot 

 Section D of the British Association. He was a fellow and at one time 

 president of the Entomological Society, Fellow of the Linnean Society, 

 and became F. E. S. in 1867. 



THE MANNA SCALE. 



At the meeting of the Entomological Society of France for December 

 28, 1892, Dr. A. Giard announced the discovery of specimens of Gossy- 

 paria mannifera Hardwick — the Tamarix scale-iusect which furnished 

 the manna of the Hebrews — in a sending of Prof. Trabut of the Medical 

 School of Algeria. This is a wide extent of the range of this species, 

 which had formerly been found only in Arabia, Eussia, and Armenia. 

 Dr. Giard considers the Tamarix mannifera of Ehrenberg to be probably 

 identical with T. galHca, and calls attention to the fact that the name 

 ^or the scale-insect suggested by Hardwick in 1822 having been Chermes 

 numnifer, Signoret's adoption of the name Gossyparia manniferus was 

 unjustifiable. He further states that the manna which Dr. Trabut has 

 observed in abundance is certainly a production of the insect, and not 

 a section of the parasitized plant. 



A CURIOUS SEED-POD DEFORMATION. 



Dr. Eose, of the Botanical Division of this Department, has handed 

 us a herbarium specimen of an interesting leguminous plant fron 

 Mexico — Desmanthus virgatus — which normally gives off groups of from 

 three to five narrow pods, averaging nearly three inches in length by 

 one-eighth of an inch in width. We have found the seeds in these pods 

 infested by Briichus hisignatus and the Bruchus parasitized by a new 



