176 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



own interest and duty with reference to 

 insects, and need to be forced by law to a 

 sense of its importance. Words persuade, 

 but examples convince. Let every intelli- 

 gent farmer help demonstrate it for the 

 good of himself and others. — W. S. B. 



Carnivorous habits of Caddis- 

 worms. — Mr. G. C. Goody records the 

 observation, in a recent number of Science 

 Gossip, that Phryganeid larvK occasionally 

 feed on fish eggs and upon a spider, 

 while he has fed several upon beef and 

 mutton. The food of these insects is 

 normally vegetarian, and the facts men- 

 tioned by Mr. Goody find correspondence 

 in many other species normally plant-feed- 

 ing, but which, when opportunity offers or 

 necessity obliges, become carnivorous or 

 even cannibalistic. 



It appears from the last official report 

 that at the end of the last year, in forty- 

 three departments in France affected by 

 the Phylloxera, 1,773,154 acres of vines 

 were quite destroyed, and 317,760 partially 

 injured. The east, west, south and center 

 are ravaged, and the north is menaced. 

 The disease has reached Cote d'Or, and 

 will soon be in Champagne and Lorraine. 

 If no remedy is discovered, it is calculated 

 that in sixteen years France will have no 

 vines left. It is among the probabilities that 

 America will ere long be the wine producing 

 country of the world. — Farmers Review. 



Mr. Seth Green says that one morning 

 when he was watching a spider's nest, a 

 mud-wasp alighted within an inch or two 

 of the nest, on the side opposite the open- 

 ing. Creeping noiselessly around toward 

 the entrance to the nest, the wasp stopped 

 a little short of it, and, for a moment, re- 

 mained perfectly quiet. Then reaching 

 out one of her antennae, she wriggLed it 

 before the opening, and withdrew it. This 

 overture had the desired effect ; for the 

 boss of the nest, as large a spider as one 

 generally sees, came out to see what was 

 wrong, and set it to rights. No sooner 

 had the spider emerged to that point at 

 v/hich he was at the worst disadvantage, 



than the wasp, with a quick movement, 

 thrust her sting into the body of her foe, 

 killing him easily and almost instantly. 

 The experiment was repeated, on the part 

 of the wasp; and when there was no re- 

 sponse from the inside, she became satis- 

 fied, probably, that she held the fort. At 

 all events, she proceeded to enter the nest 

 and slaughter the young spiders, which 

 were afterwards lugged off one at a time. 



— Gra ijge Bulletin . 



♦-— * ■ 



Development of the Eyes and Lumi- 

 nosity IN the Fire-flies. — Mr. H. S. 

 Gorham of Shipley, England, has called 

 attention to the development of the eyes, 

 especially in the males, in direct proportion 

 to the luminosity of the species, and to 

 that of the female when that sex has the 

 greatest luminosity. The plumosity or 

 flabellation of the antennae is on the con- 

 trary in the inverse proportion, that is to 

 say, these genera in which the antennas are 

 plumose in the male, usually have small 

 eyes. Where the eyes are large in both 

 sexes, both sexes are luminous and the 

 male perhaps most so, and both are fur- 

 nished with wings. Where the female is 

 especially the luminous sex, she is fre- 

 quently unable to fly, and it is here that the 

 eyes in the males attain the largest devel- 

 opment. 



•*~^*- 



Grape Phylloxera not at the Cape. 

 — It would seem that the panic among 

 some of the Cape Colony wine growers in 

 regard to the work of Phylloxera on their 

 vines was premature and unwarranted, as 

 an examination of the roots of the un- 

 healthy vines by Mr. R. A. McLachlan 

 and Mr. Roland Trimen of Cape Town 

 showed that all the characteristic signs of 

 Phylloxera-work were wanting. The im- 

 portance in such cases of an examination 

 by competent entomologists can not be too 

 strongly urged, because vines are well 

 known to suffer and die from other causes, 

 which are too apt to be mistaken for Phyl- 

 loxera-work by those unfamiliar therewith. 



The fruit growers of California want a 

 law that will oblige bee-keepers to keep 



