262 FORTY-FIBST RePORT ON THE StATE MuSEUM. 



socket upon the lower side of the tliorax and abdomen, by means of 

 which the insect is able, when laid or fallen upon its back, to spring 

 upwards several inches, and in dropping to regain its feet. Without 

 this provision, it would be difficult for it to recover its position if left 

 alone to the aid of its short and rigid legs. The larva is a borer in 

 apple trees, but as it is mainly a feeder upon decaying wood, it can 

 not be regarded as an injurious insect, except as it may hasten the 

 destruction of a tree in which decay has already commenced. 



* Thanasimus dubitts (Fabr.). — Numbers of this insect — one of the 

 Gleridce — were observed upon cut pine timber, at Schoharie, May thir- 

 teenth, but dropping quickly to the ground when approached. They 

 had probably been feeding on some of the wood-eating larvse' under 

 the bark. A species nearly allied to this, captured by me upon the 

 summit of Mt. Marcy, at an elevation of 5,300 feet, on August 8, 1877, 

 has recently been identified by Mr. E. A. Schwarz, as Glerus ? analis 

 LeConte. 



* Magrodacttlus subspinosus {.Fabr.). — Under date of July fourth, 

 Mr. H. J. Foster, of East Palmyra, N. Y., wrote that the rose-bug had 

 made his cherry-trees leafless the preceding year, and that this year 

 they were eating the leaves of the wild-grape, and the apples where 

 they occur in clusters. 



Lbma trilineata Oliv. — Larvae of this insect in various stages of 

 growth, some mature and building up their white cocoons of frothy 

 matter given out from their mouth, and also the perfect beetle feeding 

 on a species of Physalis, were received August twenty-sixth, from 

 Mr. M. H. Beckwith, of the New Yoi^k State Agricultural Experiment 

 Station at Geneva. 



* Chrysochus auratus (Fabr.). — Professor S. A. Forbes, of Cham- 

 paign, Illinois, has kindly communicated to me a new food-plant 

 for this beetle, discovered in the State of New York. He had received, 

 under the date of July seventh, from Mr, C. Fred Johnson, of Bayport, 

 Suffolk Co., some " potato-bugs," which he identified as this species. 

 It had " appeared only on a dozen or so plants, in a field of two acres, 

 but as many as thirty or forty were found on a single jDlant." It had 

 never before been recorded as occurring injuriously upon any culti- 

 vated plant. 



* Trirhabda Canadensis (Kirby). — On the twenty-second of June, at 

 Schoharie, N. Y., a large patch of the golden rod, Solidago Canadensis, 

 was observed to be infested with numbers of shining black larvae, 



