1 897-] Report of Entomological Branch. ii 



REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL BRANCH, 



To the Council of the Ottawa Field- Naturalists' Club : 



The Leaders have much pleasure in presenting the follow- 

 ing brief report on the work of the year 1896-97. 



COLEoPTERA. — The species belonging to this order are now 

 so well represented in our collections that many additions can- 

 not be expected, except as the result of very careful and special 

 collecting in such families as the Dytiscidae and Hydrophilidae, 

 which are chiefly aquatic forms, or the Staphylinidse, many of 

 which live in, or upon, decaying vegetable matter or fungi. A 

 few additions to our list are, however, annually made, even in 

 the groups which have been more fully worked up, and occasion- 

 ally some very rare species is accidently obtained. From time 

 to time our territory is reached by insects, either American or 

 foreign, which have gradually spread from more distant points. 

 Some of these species multiply very rapidly, and thus may, in 

 a few years after the first individuals are noticed, become quite 

 abundant. Such has been the case with Aphodius prodromus 

 Brahm., mentioned in previous reports, and which is now every- 

 where met with. Another instance is Sphceridiuni scarabceoides 

 Linn., first found at Casselman in May 1895, and which Mr. 

 Simpson last summer found to be abundant at King's Mere. It 

 is somewhat curious that, though so plentiful there, careful 

 search in the more immediate vicinity of the city has failed to 

 produce specimens. A • pretty little steel-blue weevil was last 

 summer observed for the first time, viz., Cetorhynchus cyanipen- 

 nis Germ. This species appears to have been first noticed in 

 America about ten years ago(Entomologica Americana Vol. V., 

 p. 57.) but it must now be somewhat widely distributed as a 

 specimen taken at Toronto was received for examination. In 

 Ottawa it has occurred upon garden-cress. A rare beetle picked 

 up on the railway track near Casselman is Hyleccetus lugubris 



