8 BULLETIN BROOKLYN ENTOM. SOC. VOL. VI May 1883. ] 
Notes on some Sesiide 
“By Geo. D. Hulst. 
Bembecia Marginata. jalenne ‘August 26th 1881, I was in a little field: 
erown up in brars near my home in Brooklyn, when I noticed what at 
first seeme 1 to be a common yellow hornet. Having some suspicion, 
I caught it, and found it to be a female margzwa/fa, an insect which a year 
before, (it being then unknown to Mr. Hy. Edwards and the Brooklyn 
Lepidopterists), I had called Sesr flavipes. Between the above capture 
and Sept. rgth, when I took the last, I captured altogether about 75 
males and 60 females and made the followiny observations. The moths 
emerge from pupze during the early part of the day and climbing up the 
plants near at hand generally lie exposed to the sunshine on the upper 
surface of leaves. The males begin to fly from 2 to 4 o’clock in the after- 
noon, seeking for the females which remain at rest. ‘The males fly with 
very great rapidity up and down the paths among the briars, resembling 
the most rapidly moving flies in flight, They are strongly attracted 
by the females; I found a virgin female, and was able to capture 
in one afterncon 27 males attracted to her. The sexes remain in 
‘coitu over night, or at least till late in the evening. With the early sun- 
shine the female begins her flight for the purpose of laying her eggs. 
These are always in my observation laid on the standing blackberry both 
wild and cultivated. ‘The female flies slowly, is not easily disturbed in 
flight, and is without difficulty taken in a cyanide bottle. In laying her 
eggs, she alights on the upper surface of a blackberry leaf old or young, 
high or low, indiscriminately, — for a moment, stands fluttering her 
wings and so stands on tip toe -— then moving, sideways. and bending her 
abdomen around the edge of the leaf she deposits a single egg beneath, 
then flies on, as a rule only a yard or two, then lights again. I, saw the 
female often light on the leaves of other plants, but she immediately left 
them without laying. They are very rarely seen at their work after ro 
oclock. The males are quiet during the morning, resting on the top of 
the leaves, and on being disturbed fall to the ground simulating death, 
Both male and female remarkably resemble certain hornets, and 
~ make a dull humming sound in flight. . 
The egg of the moth is perfectly oval in shape, and smooth under 
a high magnifying power. I kept eggs under ordinary conditions, but 
they had not hatched by mid winter, when a sweeping, (the bane of all 
well ordered students), swept them into the fire. In the field, none so 
far as I could see of many examined, were hatched when the leaves fell 
