No. 401.] ZHE FRUITING OF THE BLUE FLAG. | 371 
Lampyridz, common at dusk and on dark days, especially the first-named: 
Telephorus carolinus Fabr. 
Podabrus bastlaris Say. 
Podabrus rugulosus Lec. 
Lucidota atra Fabr. 
The following insects, seen more rarely : 
Mordella marginata Melsh. 
Male mosquito (undetermined). 
III. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FLOWERS. 
The flowers of the blue flag when bitten have a sweetish 
taste, which seems to invite their destruction at the jaws of a 
number of insects that are ever near at hand. -I observed 
adult flag weevils, noctuid moth larvæ, and grasshoppers to be 
especially destructive while the flowers were in full bloom.! 
Any service the weevils may render as pollinators is greatly 
overbalanced by the destructiveness of their feeding habits. 
Not content with puncturing the walls of the nectary, they 
sometimes riddle the perianth leaves and the style divisions, 
destroying or (what is equally fatal) displacing the parts con- 
cerned in fertilization.? 
All the grasshoppers (Acrididæ and Locustidæ) about the 
flag beds and in the neighboring sedges eat the freshly opened 
flowers, mainly nibbling a little at the margins of the petals or 
sepals and doing little real harm, but sometimes destroying the 
flowers completely. 
The destructive moth larvae were of three species: Arsi- 
lonche albovenosa Goeze, Mamestra sp.?* and Spilosoma con- 
1 Feeding upon the wilted flowers a day after they had closed and when re! 
? This weevil has been reported by Mr. G. C. Davis as very destructive to 
pner garden Irides, at Flint, Mich. Znsect nig vol. vii, p. 201, 1894. 
3 I did not rear this species; two of my larve taken for rearing were parasitiz 
with a species of Apanteles; the remainder bs well as many in the field) died of 
some bacterial disease. Arsilonche albovenosa was abundantly parasitized with 
Rhogas intermedius Cr. 
