BULLETIN OF THE BROOKLYN ENT. SOC. 23 



LARViE OF CICINDELiE. 



The larvae of Cicindelae are very common and when looked for 

 in the right places may be taken in numbers and very easily. 



So I can say now but previous to this season I looked in vain for 

 them lying half days on sandy spots, digging and introducing 

 straw into the little holes in the sand. But all in vain. 



August 19th last I met on a bank of the North Branch of the Cal- 

 licoon, a tributary of the Delaware, some feet distant from the 

 river a clayey elevation, three to four feet high with bare face, cov- 

 ered with many little holes ("densely and deeply punctured" I 

 might say) swarming with little hymenoptera. 



The idea struck me : "that is a place like the one where Dr. 

 Horn relates (Trans. Am Ent. Soc. VII. 31.) that Amblychila 

 breeds." I began to dig, in two minutes I had one larva of a Ci- 

 cindela and after one hour I had about 60 and two pupae, one of 

 which developed Aug. 30th and another Aug. 31st and proved to 

 be Cicindela 12 guttata. 



Aug 25th I went to Callicoon at the locality where I detected a 

 few years ago Cicindela marginipennis and found there on a clay- 

 ey elevation about tw T o feet high in an hour about 50 larvae of an- 

 other Cicindela, head and prothorax different from those above, 

 which proved to be Cicindela repauda ; and at a bank, fresh 

 broken a dozen larvae of still another species, being about twice as 

 large and having their holes not like the two previous close to each 

 other, but rather distant. The holes of the above larvae w r ere from 

 3 to 6 inches deep. 



Aug 27th I sought along the roadside and in the fields near the 

 farm where 1 Hved and where I used to find Cicindela vulgaris, 

 and found in a short time a number of larvae very much resem- 

 bling the last mentioned large-sized ones. 



I had four or five collecting boxes with me and when I arrived 

 home half of the larvae were devoured by their brethren. 



They can walk and run very quickly and when touched at the 

 abdomen they jerk around and often jump over six inches high, 

 when touched at the head' they bite and hang or stick at the finger 

 so that they may be lifted up. When walking around and meet- 

 ing each other they bite and fight in a fearful rage, often killing 

 each other, head and prothorax being hard and corneous, while the 

 abdomen is extremely soft and tender. 



