4 feNtoMoLOGiCAL Nfiws. tJa"" *oS 



chance remarks indicating that others have likewise found it 

 elusive (see Williamson: Ent. News, Vol. XIII. p. no). 

 So on the afternoon of the following day, June 27th, I betook 

 myself to the largest of our north-shore streamlets, called by 

 courtesy Pettibone Creek, whose south branch flows through 

 a fine bit of native oak woods. In this south branch are many 

 deep and shadowy pools overhung with spreading clumps of 

 witch hazel, and the connecting streamlet is hardly more than 

 a rivulet, winding among small moss-grown boulders or cut- 

 ting under green banks of grass and sedge. 



The pools are the home of the Cordulegaster nymphs. 

 They lie on the bottom covered by the silt. They do not bur- 

 row, but descend into the silt by raking it out from beneath 

 with their legs. Then when deep enough they kick it up over 

 their backs and hide themselves absolutely against observation, 

 having only the sharp upper angles of the eyes, the sensitive 

 antennae and frontal fringe, and the respiratory aperture at 

 the tip of the abdomen exposed. Thus they lie in ambush, 

 wholly inactive, unless the wandering near of some mayfly 

 nymph (here Leptophlebia pcrpedita Etn.) or gnat larva in- 

 vites a thrust of the enormous grasping labium. They have 

 competitors for this food, also dwelling in the pools, chiefly 

 the red-bellied minnow, and the black-nosed dace. 



I hoped this afternoon to discover cast nymph skins beside 

 the stream, to find the male which had as yet escaped me, and 

 to observe the female ovipositing, as well as to attend to another 

 matter to be mentioned further on. On first approach I saw a 

 fine male sitting upon a stout reed over the stream, at once he 

 dashed off into the woods. Soon I saw another coursing low 

 over the narrow part of the stream, here almost blocked with 

 overgrown clumps of cowslip and water plantain. His beat 

 was the narrow and sinuous lane which the stream cuts through 

 the deep and bottom land herbage. I let him pass once and 

 then took my place beside this lane ; presently back he came, 

 after the manner of his kind, directly over the water. A quick 

 sweep of the net brought up from behind just as he was pass- 

 ing, and I had my first male specimen fluttering inside. I 

 caught another on another beat, but the half dozen or more 



