14 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
imagos. But this is not always the reason for this malforma- 
tion. This season I had two larve of Liparis dispar, which 
were confined in a large, wide-mouthed glass with a muslin 
cover, and which were abundantly fed, their food being the 
large leaves of the plum, and their number so small there was 
no difficulty about it, and they spun up in the midst of plenty 
on the 21st and 24th of July. The imagos appeared on the 
15th of August; both females, with shrivelled wings. Should 
the pupa be enclosed in a glass or box which is not sufficiently 
large to give the imago ample room to expand, the same 
shrivelling will occur; but in this case, neither a want of 
space nor a scarcity of food could have been the cause.— 
Owen Wilson ; Cwmffred, Carmarthen, August 16, 1873. 
Insect Congeries.—Many species of insects are known to 
occur occasionally in vast swarms, and our entomological 
periodicals contain several records of facts of this description. 
In the “‘nest-room” at the British Museum may be seen a 
cluster of the Dipterous fly Atherix Ibis, concerning which 
Walker’s ‘ Diptera’ contains the following note:—‘ The 
female of this fly is gregarious, and attaches its eggs in large 
clusters to boughs hanging over streams, and there remains, 
and shortly dies. The cluster is generally pear-shaped, and 
sometimes contains many thousands of dead flies, and con- 
tinually receives accessions by new comers settling upon it.” 
Similar masses have since been found of even larger size, and 
they are probably not uncommon. I have a vivid recollection 
of seeing small heaps of dead bodies of winged ants on the 
roof of the great tower of the Abbey Church of St. Alban’s, 
in September, 1870 ; and a like swarm gave rise to an alarm of 
fire at Cobourg in 1865,—noticed in the daily papers at the 
time: smoke was apparently seen issuing from the spire of the 
cathedral; a scaffolding was hastily erected, and a man sent 
up with buckets of water to check the impending conflagra- 
tion. It was then discovered that an immense congregation 
of winged ants flying around the tower was the sole cause of 
the alarming phenomenon. Everyone recollects the service 
the myriads of Syrphide and Coccinelle rendered to penny- 
a-liners in search of a subject on which to exercise their 
Horid pens during the “silly season” a few years back; and 
many kinds of Aphides and Thrips are ofttimes equally 
anxious to achieve notoriety by the mere force of numbers, 
