178 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [May, '06 



As a rule I found most of the stemmed polyphemus cocoons 

 on the lowermost limbs of shade trees, such as the cut-leaved 

 maple lining the streets and avenues of cities. This habit of 

 fastening such cocoons on trees of public highways, must be 

 accounted for in my mind as a protection against birds, as 

 well as being stepped upon or crushed by pedestrians and 

 vehicles. 



On the other hand the same cocoons spun up in the leaf of 

 white birch, nine times out of ten, would be defoliated and 

 drop to the ground, where, if not destroyed by mice, would 

 develop into imagines of this race unless parasitized. 



I very seldom found a stemmed cocoon on white birch, and 

 collected hundreds by turning over leaves in the winter under 

 low-growing bushes, and usually on the banks of streams or 

 the roadside of suburban parks. 



Quite the contrary with stemmed cocoons found on low trees 

 of bush-like growth of swamp or pin oak. I will recall a 

 locality in the heart of a suburb of Jersey City, known then as 

 Bayonne, on a narrow stripe of land bordering on New York 

 Bay on the east, and Newark Bay west of it. Only two blocks 

 from the New Jersey Central R. R., with handsome residences 

 all around, were two squares, where the topography admitted 

 of no residences. The year round this ideal winter collecting 

 ground was under water from 12 to 18 inches deep, and shel- 

 tered birds, butterflies and moths. There must have been 

 warm springs in these two city blocks, because only on the 

 coldest days, with the mercury near the zero mark, could I 

 venture to collect in this marshy place. Thus being less than 

 a quarter mile from either bay, the property could not be 

 drained. 



In this swamp I collected one winter, mostly in January, 

 some two hundred and fifty cocoons of polyphejnus alone, hun- 

 dreds of promethea and a few of cecropia cocoons. During the 

 same winter I sent to Prof. Levi P. Mengel, of Reading, Pa., 

 350 cocoons of polyphemus, and over 3000 cecropia cocoons, 

 all collected with the exception of polyphemus on Jersey City 

 Heights and environs. To refer back to polyphemus cocoons 

 I collected from swamp oak, they were dangling from defolia- 

 ted branchlets like nuts from a Christmas tree. 



