^o The West A^nerican Scientist. 



both nurserymen and amateurs as this Weeping Lilac. Its 

 exceeding graceluhiess of form; its curiously arranged leaves, in 

 pairs and set like a bird's wings in flight; its white blossoms, 

 which deck it with honey-scented clusters of flowers, such as no 

 other weeping tree can boast; these things make it the most 

 unique of all this highly decorative and popular class of trees. 



The lilac is beloved by everybody. It is associated with our 

 earliest remembrances of blossoms, and it has a hold upon the 

 imagination and the aflection of all, as strong and as tender as its 

 fragrance is distinct. The first shrub that our ancestors brought 

 from England and planted by their new thresholds was the purple 

 lilac. 



Newer trees and shrubs were added, but none of them could 

 fill that fragrant corner in the heart held by the old ' common 

 lilac' It is surely this deep feeling that has at once appropriated 

 the * Weeping Lilac ' and given it such a welcome. 



This interesting tree received a first-class certificate of merit 

 from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and is introduced 

 and for sale only by the "Shady Hill Nurseries," Cambridge, 

 Mass. 



[They issue a large illustrated catalogue with colored plates of 

 this and other novelties, free to all. Send them your address. — 

 Editor.] 



SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY, 



M. Lopatecki reports two curious insects from the west waste 

 of Central America. One of them is Ageronia feronia, a remarka- 

 ble species, being only one butterfly or moth with the exception 

 of the European-death-bed-hawk-moth, which is capable to bring- 

 forth sound at will. The insect is whitish gray, with dark brown 

 curves and lines, and sits head downward, with expanded wings, 

 against a branch of a tree of its own hue. When approached it 

 will rapidly fly ofl", producing on the wing several sharp and very 

 quick sounds. 



The other insect is of the family Anoea, and with closed wings 

 resembles exactly the color of the leaves of its food plant to such 

 perfection that even at a very short distance it is scarcely possible 

 to recognize it. The first of those insects M. Lopatecki observed 

 near San Juan del Sur, in Nicaragua; the second one in San 

 Lorenzo, in the Republic of Honduras, though the natives assert 

 that those insects are to be found all over Central America on 

 the Pacific and on the Atlantic coasts. 



The most numerous family is, without question, the insect 

 world. President Sharp, of the London Entomological Society, 

 states that, while Linnaeus knew only 3,000 species of insects 120 

 years ago, the collections of the world probably include at pres- 

 ent 200,000 or 250,000 species. Certain data lead to the inference 

 that we do not yet possess m6re than one-tenth of those existing. 



