178 NOTES ON THE DRY SUMMER OF 1896. 



Galls. The second stage, in the life-cycle of this insect, is not 

 an insect bearing the lineaments of its parents, but a totally 

 distinct one known as Neuroterus lenticularis, which produces the 

 small Oak-Spangles in the autumn. It will thus be seen that 

 each species of gall-insecfc resembles its grandparents and not 

 its parents. 



In that delightful book of his, dealing with "Tropical 

 Africa," Prof. Drummond tells us, in his own inimitable manner, 

 of the surprise he once felt at seeing what he thought to be 

 white droppings from a tree, on a water-worn boulder, move ! 

 and how, on examination, the spots turned out to be not 

 droppings at all, but a real living insect, that so closely simulated 

 the white droppings from the trees as at first to deceive the 

 observant Professor himself. On the leaves of the oak, birch 

 mountain ash, and the alder, I, last summer, found an insect, 

 much resembling that described by Prof. Drummond. It is the 

 larva of one of the " lace- wings," a bit of animality that 

 carries on its back a pent-house composed of the smallest 

 fragments of lichen mixed with the dead cases of the aphides, 

 on which it has fed. Touch the leaf and the creature shows 

 not the least sign of life, looking, for all the world, like the 

 merest scrap of lichen ; but stand still and watch it awhile, and 

 you will find that the apparently inanimate substance is really 

 alive, and can be as nimble as possible. The staple diet of the 

 little fellow hidden behind the shield, consists of aphides. These 

 it kills by sucking the juices from their bodies, the dry cases 

 afterwards being woven into the strange mantle on its back. 

 Until last summer, when I could take them by the score, I had 

 only met with a couple of specimens. The Natural History 

 Editor of the Yorhshire WeeUy Post, to whom I communicated 

 certain particulars about this representative of the "lace-wings," 

 informed me that I had come on what appeared to be a rare 

 habitat, he being unable to find that the insect had been noticed 

 more than once before as frequenting the alder. 



So many peculiarities attended the drought that the 

 difficulty is to bring one's-self to stopping-point. These 

 remarks would be incomplete, however, if no mention were made 

 of the absence of those dark blotches on the leaves of the 



