OCTOBER. 319 



C. Notwithstanding a few pretty smart frosts, we have 

 had some very pleasant weather lately ; and though the 

 days are warm, the midges, musquitoes, and such like pesti- 

 ferous insects, have ceased to molest us. 



F. In the autumn of 1835, though by no means a 

 cold season, we had, on the 30th of September, a fall of 

 snow, which continued without intermission throughout the 

 day ; so that in some places in the neighbourhood it stood 

 on the ground to the depth of fifteen inches. We were dis- 

 mayed with the anticipation of an early and severe winter, 

 but the snow vanished almost as rapidly as it had fallen, 

 and the winter did not set in for many weeks afterward, 

 though it proved unusually severe in December and Feb- 

 ruary. 



C. I caught lately in the house, a fine Noctua, the 



Crimson Underwing (Catocala ?} ; and on the 25th 



ult. late in the evening, I saw several fireflies in the grass 

 at intervals, but none in flight : one, which I secured, proved 



to be a larva. Oh ! look what a family of young bugs 



on this decaying stick ; some in larva, others in pupa : the 

 abdomens of all are scarlet. How closely they are congre- 

 gated together ! 



F. I have often discovered broods or nests of this 

 kind, and invariably find them thus associated together : I 

 suppose they are the young of a small species, which is 

 black, with a scarlet transverse line on the thorax^ and two 

 scarlet spots on the scutellum (Cydnus Bilineata?^). A 

 few days since, I took, on a dunghill, a Staphylinus, which I 

 had not met with before : the head horn coloured ; thorax 

 and elytra brown and black, mottled ; abdomen silvery- 

 black, with a tawny central line, the fourth and fifth seg- 

 ments grey (Staphylinus Chrysocephalus ?). A little black 

 Chafer is numerous, the thorax projecting like a horn over 

 the head, much more prominent in some than in others 



