Queries and Answers. 477 
winter quarters preparatory to their usual change, and that some of them 
died without forming a chrysalis, but throwing out a silky substance round 
them, which was shortly after filled with a number of minute eggs. I kept a 
chrysalis, and also some of those eggs, in a box till the next summer, when 
the former produced a white butterfly with black spots on its wings, and the 
latter produced from every egg @ small dark brown fly. 1 cannot suppose a 
butterfly to be the parent of a very different insect, and therefore shall be 
obliged if any of your numerous correspondents will favour me with an 
explanation of this. I am, Sir, &c.— Thomas Morgan. Southampton, 
June 21. 1830. 
Two Curculios. — I send two insects which appear to me to belong to the 
Curculie, and beg for information as to the real name, and the manner and 
time of undergoing the different transformations. I took them off some 
beans in my garden; but they appear to me to be the same insects that I 
have observed on beans, peas, tares, and even clover, ever since the dry 
year of 1826, when they did much mischief. They are most easily found 
m a warm sunny day, but are apt to be alarmed, and take shelter under small 
clods ; and they are found very plentifully upon strong soils when the clods 
are removed. Is it the larve of this insect which we sometimes find feeding 
upon the pea when the husk is opened? I see Mr. Rennie says the larvae 
ot some of these species produce the anbury on the turnips and the knots 
on the roots of cabbage. (Insect Architecture, Library of Entertaining Know- 
Zedge, p. 389.) — J. C. Farmer, May 29. 1830. 
A Grub injurious to Oats. — Will any of your numerous correspondents 
give some detailed information respecting the grub which is so very inju- 
rious to our oats ; of how many species of the Z‘ipula the larvee are injurious, 
by what names they are called; the distinction between grub and wire- 
worm ; at what time the egg is laid, the larva hatched, and when it is found 
as the chrysalis and perfect insect ? An answer may lead to some practical 
results. — Id. 
Carabus crépitans and C. nemoralis. — I was fortunate enough last autumn 
to procure a specimen of Carabus crépitans Lin. and Latreille. The explo- 
sions which this insect is enabled to make, when disturbed or irritated, are 
very distinctly audible, even at a little distance, but the accounts we have of 
them are greatly exaggerated. The sound emitted by this specimen was 
something between a chirp and the report of a small piece of artillery, with 
which we were wont to amuse ourselves “ in days gone by,” commonly 
called a “ potato gun;” but I must say I could not perceive the slightest 
appearance of smoke, by which some have alleged the explosion is accom- 
panied; nor were our olfactory nerves gratified by any of those fetid 
odours, the power of emitting which has been ascribed to this insect by 
some naturalists. Of the same genus I also took in the garden the C. 
nemoralis Linn. and Lat., which, so far as I know, has never been described 
as a British insect. Latreille describes it as a native of Europe. 'The body 
is black; thorax with violet-coloured margins; elytra, obscure copper- 
coloured, rugose, and having hollow dots in a triple series. May I beg the 
favour of any of your entomological correspondents to inform us whether 
they have met with this species in Britain? I am, Sir, &c.— dA. L. A. 
Alnwick, April 7. 1830. 
Pterostichus parumpunctatus. — The insect described by T. H. (p. 50.), a 
specimen of which he has been. so obliging as to forward to me, is, I have 
little-doubt, the Pterdstichus parumpunctatus of Dejean. It is fortunate 
you have given so good a figure of the insect whose curious economy is so 
interestingly detailed by T. H., as it enables us to correct an error into 
which he has fallen respecting its name. The Proctotrupide of Latreille 
have abdomens more or less peduncled, the superior wings have very few 
nervures, and no discoidal cells, and the inferior not more than one nervure. 
Platygaster, to which, probably, Linnus’s Zchneumon ovuldrum is nearly 
Tig ats) 
