1S47.] Winter Insects of Eastern JS'^eiv York. 215 



it with them, bestowing upon it the specific name liycmalis. But, 

 inasmuch as it ditfered from the Panorpida? in some prominent par- 

 ticulars, such as possessing the faculty of leaping, andj being 

 furnished with an ovipositor similar to many grasshoppers and 

 crickets, Panzer, at a subsequent day, placed it under the genus 

 Gryllus. More recent naturalists, however, have concurred in 

 the propriety of the location originally given by Linnaeus, and to 

 obviate, in some degree, the incongruity of its situation, Latreille 

 was induced to construct for it an independent genus, placed be- 

 side Panorpa, to which genus he gave the name Boreus. The 

 hyemalis has remained to this day the sole species of this genus, 

 no other insect having similar characters, having been discovered 

 in any part of the world. Two years since, in the month of March, 

 searching carefully upon the melting snow, to find if possible in 

 this vicinity, a rare and singular insect which has been lately dis- 

 covered in Canada — the Ckionea valga, a fly destitute of wings — 

 though unsuccessful, my labors were rewarded with an equally 

 acceptable return, an insect cogeneric with the curious Boreus 

 /iye?Ha/w of Europe. Since that time, I have met with numer- 

 ous specimens, and have also found in the same situations, several 

 individuals of a third species pertaining to the same genus. From 

 tliese specimens I draw the following detailed characters of the 



Genus BOREUS, Latreille. 



Polished and shining. Head sunk into the thorax to the eyes, 

 which are prominent; ocelli wanting. Rostrum long-conical, 

 twice or thrice as long as the head from which it gradually ta- 

 pers, projecting downwards at right angles with the body, or more 

 or less inclined backwards imder the breast, its front side clothed 

 with minute hairs. Maxillary palpi reaching beyond the tip o-f 

 the beak; terminal joint longest and slightly thicker than the 

 others, long ovate; basal joints cylindrical, half as long as they 

 are broad. Antenna inserted in the middle of the front, their ba- 

 ses nearer to the margin of the eyes than to each other, reaching 

 half the length of the abdomen in the females and to its tip in the 

 males, thickly set with very short minute hairs; filiform, hardly 

 thicker towards their tips, composed of twenty-three joints; two 

 basal joints thickest, the first sub-cylindric, the second obovate; 

 succeeding joints short-cylindric, compact; terminal joint ovate. 

 Thorax cylindrical, scarcely as broad as the head. WiJigs, in the 

 males, rudimentary and not adapted for flying. Upper pair rep- 

 resented by two coriaceous pseud-elytral scales which reach rath- 

 er more than half the length of the abdomen; these are broadest 

 at their base and gradually taper to an acute point, the length be- 

 ing over four times as great as the breadth; they are very convex 

 above and concave on their under sides, and thus when detached. 



