554 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



an interesting history, and has occupied a unique place in our entomo- 

 logic Hterature. Unhke the larva of the beetle, P s e p h e'n u s, or that 

 of the syrphus fly, Micro don, or the larval case of the caddis fly 

 Helicopsyche, or the nymph of the May fly, Prosopistoma, 

 all of which were for a time mistaken for moUusks, the S i s y r a larva, 

 was clearly an insect, but not referable by its discoverers to any 

 definite place in the insect series. James Hogg first found it while 

 studying fresh-water sponges, and J, O. Westwood brought it to the 

 notice of the public. A discussion was then raging in the learned 

 societies of the old world as to whether sponges belong to the plant or 

 to the animal kingdom, and the Sisyr a larva was dragged, an innocent 

 victim, into this controversy. Dujardin, maintaining that sponges are 

 animals, told the French academy that he found in the sponge body 

 numerous fine filaments that moved to and fro. James Hogg, on the 

 other hand, believing that sponges are plants, maintained before the 

 Linnaean society of London that the filaments seen by Dujardin were the 

 setae on the back of these larvae, which had crawled, as is their wont, 

 into the sponge through the open osteoles. 



The larva possessed two structures, also, so unique in character that 

 interest in them has survived the sponge controversy, and on account of 

 which the original figures of Westwood and Grube are handed down in 

 textbooks of the present day. These peculiar parts are i) paired, 

 jointed appendages beneath the abdominal segments, and 2) long, de- 

 curved, piercing mouth parts, of a unique suctorial type. 



Notwithstanding the interest attaching to this larva, it seems not to 

 have been reared. That it belonged to Sisyra was, I take it, a logical 

 deduction. The brief quotations which I have inserted in the above 

 bibliography will serve to show how the conviction grew. The small 

 size of the larva, and its certain Hemerobian aflinities (the larva of other 

 genera being known) left no doubt that it was Sisyra. I was unwill- 

 ing to beheve that it had not been reared till after consulting all the 

 literature in which I could find any mention of it, and examining at Cam- 

 bridge Dr Hagen's manuscript drawings illustrating hemerobian life his- 

 tories and finding among them a larva well drawn, but no pupa or 

 cocoon. 



There are several European species of Sisyra: there is one North 

 American species, S. v i c a r i a Walker, described from Georgia, and 

 afterward reported from New York.^ The species I found at Saranac 

 Inn is very close to the typical Sisyra fuscata Fabr. It differs 



1 Banks. Am. ent. soc. Trans. Possibly not vicar ia. 



