Mar., '07] entomological news. 107 



Notes and News. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL GLEANINGS FROM ALL QUARTERS 

 OF THE GLOBE. 



Brief notes on the habits of Podagrion tnantis Ashmead. — During 

 April and May, 1906, these parasites began to emerge in numbers from 

 a lot of egg-masses of Stagmomantis Carolina Linnaeus, collected in the 

 late winter of the same year from various fruit trees. The period of 

 emergence covered a month or more, and the parasites appeared to be 

 in various stages of post-embryonic development at the time they were 

 collected. After all of them had emerged, all traces of them were lost 

 until the following November, when the egg masses of the mantids were 

 again available as hosts. How the period intervening between their 

 emergence in the spring and the deposition of their known host eggs the 

 following fall is passed remains obscure. In November many of the re- 

 cently deposited egg-masses of Carolina were examined, with the result 

 that the parasites were again present within them in both adult and larval 

 stages, the former apparently about to emerge. Each larva occupied and 

 completely filled, when full grown, an individual egg in the pod. On 

 November 26, 1906, a female was found ovipositing. Thus this fall gene- 

 ration is mixed, but the majority of the brood seem to pass the winter to 

 emerge as adults in the spring of the next year. 



From 10 egg-masses of the mantid there were reared 578 Carolina, 240 

 Podagrion, and 12 hyperparasites, making a total of 830 individuals reared, 

 with an average of about 83 to the egg-pod. Including the 12 hyperpara- 

 sites, making a total fatality in Carolina of 252, the percentage of parasit- 

 ism by Podagrion is 30.4 per cent., which seems to be a fair average. 



The method of oviposition in Podagrion is not unusual, but interesting 

 because of the slenderness and length of the ovipositor. The process 

 takes some minutes, but I was unable to obtain actual records. When 

 the ovipositor has been pressed into the host for its entire length the tips 

 of the valves remain applied to the point of insertion, while they them- 

 selves bend caudad more and more as the ovipositor is thus pressed into 

 the egg-pod for all of its great length, until at last they extend far beyond 

 the body in the shape of a long-armed letter U. This gives the insect a 

 very peculiar and almost grotesque appearance. 



This insect also feigns death like the curculios. When roughly dis- 

 turbed I have seen them roll over on their side, fold the legs and antenna? 

 against the body, and in this position remain motionless and stiff for two 

 to five seconds, and then quickly regain their feet.— A. Arsenk Girault, 

 Myrtle, Ga. 



Rare Butterflies.— The question "Which is the rarest butterfly in 

 North America?" to which three pages were devoted in the January En- 

 tomological News, is not one that would be asked by a scientist, but 

 is such a one as I have sometimes been asked by people who neither 

 knew nor cared anything about entomology, but thought it necessary to 



