bisects. 7529 



March 3. The larviB are feeding well upon the flowers of the wyeh elm {Ulmus cam- 

 pestris). — H. Harpur Crewe ; Draylon-Beauchamp, March 25, 1861. 



Oviposilion, <^c., of Thera juniperala. — During the month of October, 1860, 1 look 

 several females of this insect. One of thera deposited about a score of whitish yellow 

 eggs, on a sprig of juniper. These I kept all the winter in a cold room without a 

 fire. They hatched March 16—20. The young larvae are feeding well upon the buds 

 of the wild juniper. — Id. 



Economy of Micmpteryx semicuprella. — The larva lives in young hazel-leaves, 

 making brown mines, which are at first serpentine, of gradually increasing breadth, 

 and always close to the margin of the leaf. At the middle or end of May it descends 

 to the earth, and the perfect insect is produced in the following April. Larva 2 lines 

 long, apodal, slender, almost cylindrical, gradually tapering from the slightly broader 

 pectoral segments. The colour is yellowish white, with the alimentary canal showing 

 through green. The skin is naked; under a lens it appears almost granulated: on 

 each segment is a smooth transverse fold. Head brown, very small, with white 

 bristles ; jaws squarish, wiih four blunt little teeth on the " kauflache :" prothorax 

 with two brown spois beneath ; above wiih four small brown blotches placed in a 

 curve ; anteriorly it appears rather darker from the retracted head showing through. 

 On the sides of each of the abdominal segments is a small raised spot, uncoloured, 

 ■ directed externally, and furnished with a short hair, and near it, more towards the 

 under side, two small bristle-like hairs are perceptible. Anal segment cylindrical, 

 with two bristles projecting backwards." — Kaltenbach, as translated by Mr. Stainton 

 in the ' Intelligencer^ x. 16. 



The Emerald JFin^.— Between the little river which runs through the plain at the 

 head of the Bay and the stony, rank, weed-grown little hills on the right, is a narrow 

 grassy strip, thickly studded with the green culms and broad white umbels of a gigantic 

 species of Archangelica, and where Solomon's-seal, and TroUius orientalis grow in the 

 wildest profusion. A long gray Lixus bores into all the stems of the Archangelica, 

 drilling round holes with his cylindrical snout. Here Buckley finds an emerald wing. 

 It is the elytron of a genus of Buprestidje, and is greatly admired by the coleoptero- 

 maniacs. Every man of them is desirous of obtaining the perfect insect. Some go 

 north and some south ; the plains are scoured, the mountains climbed, and the val- 

 leys searched in vain. "'Tis not in mortals to command success," hut I think it rather 

 hard that unsuccessful efforts are usually consigned to oblivion. The results so 

 triumphantly set forth, — the new genera discovered, and the beautiful forms for the 

 first time brought to light by the insect-net or the dredge, — are very gratifying, and 

 are duly recorded; but who shall chronicle the failures, — the keen disappoint- 

 ments; the labour thrown away, and the energy and enterprise fruitlessly expended ; 

 the tons of mud sifted, the bushels of sand examined, the huge stones upturned, and 

 the bushes beaten in despair ; no fragment to kindle hope, no beetle to reward the 

 patient enthusiast. Collinson the indefatigable is seen severely scrutinizing the 

 fissured bark of old trunks and the sound bark of stately trees, peering, like a jackdaw, 

 into rotten wood, or scratching up the earth like any terrier anxious about a rat. On 

 a sudden he rivets his inquiring gaze on a young oak, and gives an apology for an 

 Indian war-whoop; for he sees the owner of the emerald wing sunning himself on the 

 tender green surface of a leaf. I remember a great hunt for another emerald beetle 

 (jDrypta emarginata), with old Turner, in Hampshire, at pretty Alverstoke. In vain 

 we toiled and tore up the grassy bank ; the old man growled and swore in a deep 



VOL. XIX. 2 H 



