Insects. 7085 



the town of Grenville, I observed that the water was full of a peculiar, 

 soft, green substance, in star-shaped pellets, which I found to be the 

 excrement of saw-fly larva?, feeding in great numbers on 'the leaves of 

 the alder bushes and yellow birch trees overhanging the lake. They 

 were gray on the back, yellow undofneath, and sprinkled over with 

 black spots ; legs and claws black : one specimen larger than the rest 

 was pale green ; head white, with two black spots upon it, a row of 

 black spots down each side, and numerous transverse rows of roughish 

 W'hite spots. As this specimen spun up in a few days it was probably 

 the same as the others, but in a more advanced stage. I did not 

 succeed in rearing it, as it shrivelled up in its cocoon, from the dryness 

 of the house, during the following winter. From its size and colour it 

 may have been the larva of this Cimbex. 



C decim-maculata, Leach. One specimen received from L'Oriqual 

 on the Ottawa. Mr. Gosse reared it from larvae found feeding on 

 willows in August, in the Eastern townships. 



Nematus . In 1857 I bred a small species of Nematus from a 



woody gall which is extremely abundant and easily seen in autumn, 

 after the leaves have fallen, on the twigs of a species of willow growing 

 plentifully in swamps, near Montreal. The dead shoot at the tip of 

 the gall forms a long, curved tube, through which the perfect insect 

 effects its escape in May, each gall producing a single specimen only. 

 I have also reared from these galls numbers of a minute Chalcidite 

 (Lampronotus), which I imagine to be a parasite of the Nematus. A 

 Dipterous fly inhabits a very similar gall on the same willow 

 bushes. 



Sirex Jlavicornis, Fabr. I have had specimens of this Sirex brought 

 to me which had been found in the cellar of a store in Montreal, having 

 most probably issued from the fire-wood kept there. I also took it in 

 the woods of the counties of Argenteuil and Ottawa, in July and August, 

 1858. 



S. albicornis, Fabr. Common at Sorel and Montreal, and very 

 numerous in the woods to the north of the Ottawa, in the county of 

 Argenteuil, from the beginning of July to September. It occurs also 

 on the Southern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The females 

 vary greatly in size, and the males of this, as well as of the other 

 Sireces, are very rarely seen. 



S. dimidiatus, West. One specimen taken about fifty miles up the 

 River Rouge, August 16, 1858. 



S. cyaneus, Fabr. Two specimens were taken between the sheets 

 of a bed, in a house near Montreal, in August. They were supposed 



