THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 95 
was speedily devoured, when its captor made another incursion and 
cartied off another victim. 
During the half hour that I watched their manœuvres, each one con 
sumed one maggot and set out in search of another about once in five 
minutes ; and as they appeared to keep this up all day until late in the 
evening, and perhaps all night long, the quantity of maggots destroyed 
must have been quite considerable. One gigantic fellow of a humator 
particularly distinguished himself in this predatory warfare, making about 
three incursions to two of any of the others. I captured him finally, and 
found him rather to exceed two inches in length. 
After the lapse of a few days the maggots disappeared into the earth, 
there to undergo their final transformation, when the burying beetles left 
the place, and were succeeded by the Sz/pha rugosa and one or two of its 
congeners, numerous specimens of which frequented the remains for a 
time ; and even after the softer parts had all disappeared, I took from the 
bones several individuals of two or three species of JVittdu/a. 
I never observed the LVecrophorus mortuorum near the carcass of the 
dog, though within half a mile, in the pine woods cf Ewart Park, it was 
very numerous on the bodies of crows and other carrion birds which had 
been shot and left lying by the gamekeeper; and though I took several 
specimens of JV. vespillo, and of another nearly allied species of which I 
do not remember the name, in comparing with the LV. mortuorum, 1 never 
met with a single individual of the VV. humator or the Mecrodes littoralis in 
the pine woods. 
THE question has often been debated whether flies eat the pollen of 
plants, or merely carry it away accidentally on their legs and backs. The 
question would appear to be set at rest by a paper read at the last meeting 
of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society by Mr. A. 
W. Bennett, in which it is stated,as the result both of his own observations 
and of those of Erm. Muller, that the microscopic examination of the 
stomachs of Diptera belonging to the order Syrphidæ, shows them to 
contain large quantities of pollen-grains, especially of plants belonging to 
the order Composite. Entomologists had expressed a doubt as to whether 
it were possible for insects possessed only of a suctorial proboscis to devour 
such solid bodies as pollen-grains ; but Muller believes that the transverse 
denticulations found in the valves at the end of the proboscis of many 
Diptera are especially adapted for chewing the pollen-grains, and for 
dividing the threads by which the grains are often bound together. 
