17 



the information from Mr. W. F. Putnam that in a garden in Irwing street living maples 

 were largely infested by white ants. The evidence of the truth of this information was 

 apparent by the first glance at the trees. They were three in number, some few yards 

 separated, more than sixty feet high, two feet diameter at base, and apparently in good 

 condition, except that the bark was in certain places affected or split. Those places had 

 somewhat the appearance of the well-known winter splits of the bark of trees. In remov- 

 ing parts of the bark, directly living white ants, workers and a few soldiers, were found, 

 collected, and proved to belong to T. flavipes. Closer observation showed that small 

 open gangs, covered outside by the loose bark, ran along the tree to a height of thirty 

 feet or more. Thei'e were on this estate no old rotten stumps, but some of the adjacent 

 uninhabited estates contained them, where probably the nest may be found ; nevertheless 

 the whole estate was so overrun by white ants that they had made along the fence a long 

 track covered with the hard clay-like mud with which they usually fill the eaten parts. 

 As the boards of the fence were thin, it was perhaps judged safer to build the canal out- 

 side instead of on the interior of the boards. The house, a framehouse, about ten years 

 old, the stables and the wooden sheds were entirely intact. The estate near to it seemed 

 to be entirely free from the pest. The foliage of the infested trees looked very remark- 

 able. Mr. Sereno Watson, the curator of the Cambridge Herbarium, was at first at loss 

 to determine the leaves ; the size, the shape and the venation would not agree with any 

 known species. But when he saw the tree, he was directly sure that it was only the 

 common Acer rubrum. Some fresh shoots near the base of the tree had unmistakably 

 the leaves of the common red maple. All the other leaves were - very small, mostly not 

 more than two inches broad, the midian lobe often short, sometimes blunt and not longer 

 than the side lobes ; the rips below were about yellowish and decidedly less dark than on 

 the red maple. The owner of the estate had for ten years not observed any change in 

 the foliage of the trees. During the last winter the upper part of one tree, some twenty 

 feet, broke down in a gale, and proved to be not infested by white ants. Now it was 

 considered safe to fell the whole tree. The bark was, in the place where the gangs went 

 up along the tree, extensively bored and hollowed by the white ants. The wood itself 

 was only two feet above the ground, filled with the common white ant holes and gangs, 

 but no more than one inch deep around the stump. The inner part of the tree showed 

 the wood perfectly sound for thirty feet, except a perpendicular hole of two inches dia- 

 meter in the middle of the tree, going down to the root. This hole, perhaps made by 

 squirrels, had black ants as inhabitants. The two other trees are still standing. In con- 

 sequence of those facts, I looked around in Cambridge, and have How the suspicion that 

 perhaps the injury done to living trees may be less rare than I had supposed. If similar 

 observations are made by entomologists, I would be thankful to have them communicated 

 to me. 



PROBABLE OBIGIN OP THE WORD << BUTTERFLY." 



BY FREDERICK CLMtKSON, NEW YORK CITY. 



The transformation of a grovelling worm to the glory that attaches to the winged 

 aspirant of the heavens, has won for this insect from remote antiquity the appellation of 

 Spirit or Soul, as typical of the resurrected human body. There is, I think, good reason 

 to believe that the root meaning of the word " butterfly " dates back to early Egyptian 

 history, and as a hyeroglyphic it is synonymous as representing the qualities of complete- 

 ness and perfection which characterize the soul. I have supposed that it might serve 

 the interest of this journal to record such historical gleanings bearing upon this subject 

 as have come within my reach. It is said that in Yorkshire in England, the country folk 

 call the night-flying white moths, Souls. This restricted application of the -term very 

 forcibly expresses what had been traditionally received by these people, and which they 

 unwittingly have applied to certain white winged species. The English word " Moth" is 

 said to be the Egyptian "mutt" or "mat." "Mat" is to pass ; "mut," to die; 



2 EN. 



