94 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 
on the summit a beautiful rose-coloured pubescence. I watched them 
till they were mature and had the satisfaction of seeing them develope into 
two fine galls of this not very common species. 
My friend, Mr. L. S. White, of this city, like a true chemist, as he is, 
suggested the idea of sweighinsg he specimens of new insects we describe 
and tried his plan upon the gall flies taken the other day. The species 
taken on the buds of C. g. oferator weighed 414 millegrammes, while 
another species, probably €. g. globulus, Harris, weighed alive 18 mille 
grammes. This last was taken on a bud of the White Oak. 
Slowly, year by year, the above and other quite as interesting fragments 
in the history of the Cynipidz have come to my knowledge, and I hope 
to live to see their history fully written. It is in such investigations of 
the adits of insects that our real work and our highest enjo yen as 
Entomologists consists. 
ATGLUIM PSE. Of NS Ci een: 
BY PROFESSOR BELL, OF BELLEVILLE. 
While looking over some old memoranda a few days ago, I found the 
following, which may prove interesting to the readers of the ENTOMOLOGIST: 
In the summer of the year 1830, while residing in the northern part of 
the County of Northumberland, England, in the capacity of a farm 
student, I was requested to carry out a sentence of death upon a worth- 
less cur, which had been condemned as an incorrigible cattle chaser. 
After the execution, I dragged the carcass across some fields to a small 
clump of Willows near the river Till, and deposited it as an insect trap in 
a hollow, which, from having been long under water, was devoid of vege- 
ation. Ina short time the decomposing carcass became the resort of an 
immense crowd of the common Blow-fly, Musca carnifex, under whose 
manipulations it soon became a seething mass of the largest, fattest and 
liveliest of maggots. It also attracted a number of the Silphide, 
especially Mecrophorus humator, N. vespillo, and Necrodes littoralis. After 
capturing as many specimens of these insects as I wanted, I was much 
interested in observing their proceedings. About forty of them had 
established a sort of encampment under the vertical wall of the hole, 
about thirty inches from the carcass, to which each individual ever and 
anon made a raid and captured a fine fat maggot, which he bore off 
writhing and wriggling in his mandibles to the camping ground, where it 
