114 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [April, 



Various species of beetle can often be found on these ships, 

 from the giant elephant to some not larger than a pin's head. 

 Among this class of insects the naturalist will occasionally find 

 a rare species that will repay him for many hours spent on the 

 windy piers. Not uncommon visitors are the frogs, little green 

 and brown fellows, that could give Mark Twain's jumping frogs 

 points and then beat him out of sight. So nimble are these little 

 batrachians that it is hard work to catch them. If caught they 

 should be let loose in a greenhouse, where they do wonderfully 

 well and do much good in killing parasites. For its size the tree 

 frog can croak louder than any other member of his loud-voiced 

 family. 



Timber-laden vessels from the tropics are always worth a visit. 

 Scorpions and centipedes are common upon them, and generally 

 the visitor is rewarded by finding many beetles, and sometimes 

 the chrysalis of some tropical butterfly or moth may be met with, 

 ■which, if kept in a warm place, will hatch and give the collector 

 a perfect specimen of an insect he little dreamed of ever possess- 

 ing. Among the wood, too, may often be found the nests of the 

 mason wasp. If these are broken open and the grub is not full 

 grown, one is sure to find several kinds of small spiders that the 

 mother wasp had stung into insensibility and placed in the cell 

 for food for her progeny. — Newspaper. 



An Insect Mine. — Three years ago, in April, as I was collecting insects 

 on the shores of Lake Michigan, on the coast from South Chicago, HI., 

 to Whiting, Ind., I found, to my surprise, wintering in and on the sand, 

 Coleoptera of every kind. I found principally good and complete speci- 

 mens of Doryphora jo-lineata, Catalpa lanigera by the hundred from one- 

 lialf incU to one and one-half inches deep in the sand, while under the 

 small pieces of wood, principally bark and rubbish that had been washed 

 to the shore, could be seen a great many specimens of Galeritajanus and 

 ^phenophorus of different varieties, even this large light gray specimen, 

 C. scrutator of a darker and dull green color than ours of Missouri, some 

 C. calidum and Geopinus incrassatus^ while Pterostichus and Platynus of 

 every kind, I gathered by the thousand. I have of late years visited the 

 sand shores of the Mississippi, but never again have I seen such gregari- 

 ousness in insects. Those interested in Entomology living on lake 

 shores have a good chance if 1891 was not an e.xceptional year for Chicago 

 suburbs. — Eugene R. Fischer. 



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