158 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Gyrinus has been seldom found, and I therefore wish to state that 
on July 17th, 1880, when fishing in the Exeter Canal with my friend 
the late Rev. John Hellins, the well-known lepidopterist, he pointed 
out to me numerous cocoons of this beetle attached to the stems of 
rushes, leaves of flags (Jrzs), and sedges. He informed me that he 
had succeeded in rearing from these cocoons a hymenopterous parasite 
which he thought was new to science, and that he had forwarded 
specimens to some eminent authority in London. If I remember 
rightly, he published a note on the subject in the ‘ Entomologist’s 
Monthly Magazine. —W. 8. M. D’Ursan (Newport House, Countess 
Wear, near Exeter). 
The Sense of Fear in Insects —Prompted by Mr. Dalgliesh’s in- 
teresting notes on Gyrinus (ante, p. 64), I would like to add an 
observation of my own that I find in one of my note-books. I had 
a specimen of Pelobsus tardus, a water-beetle well known for its 
power of producing sounds, and dropped it into an aquarium contain- 
ing a two-inch Perch. This savage little fish at once darted at the 
beetle, mouthed, and attempted to swallow it; five or six times, in 
perhaps as many seconds, the struggling insect disappeared in the 
mouth of its enemy, and each time it managed to kick itself out—or 
perhaps it was ejected by the fish with a view to getting a better 
hold. Finally it took refuge under a stone, where the Perch could 
not follow it. Now, the most curious feature of the struggle was the 
succession of eloquent screams that came from the beetle; they 
were, of course, quite as audible as they would have been from an 
insect held in the hand, and, althovgh minute, the cries appeared to 
have exactly the same significance as those of a rat when cornered 
by a terrier. Yeta little thought suggests that an insect like Pelobsus 
has really no use for a sense of fear. The rasp-produced sounds, 
intensified by the violent efforts of escape, and only by the purest 
coincidence giving the human observer the impression that the insect 
was under the empire of an emotion exactly like fear, had not the 
slightest effect on the fish. I noted this particularly at the time.— 
FREDK. J. STUBBS. 
