1877.] Hunting Amblychila. 7383 
occurrence of this insect, and that subsequent seasons may prove, 
like the season of 1876, less productive of specimens. It is a 
well-known fact that a species may occur in abundance for a 
single year and then become comparatively rare or altogether 
unknown for several years in succession. This law will doubt- 
less be found to apply to Amblychila as well as to other insects. 
I was disappointed to find this insect apparently devoid of 
that intensely ferocious nature which had been ascribed to it by 
sensational writers for the Eastern press, and which would be sug- 
gested by its position at the head of a ravenous family of beetles, 
the Cicindelidæ or tiger-beetles. I have watched these insects 
night after night coming forth from their hiding-places soon after 
sundown and beginning their night-long search for food. I am 
satisfied that their sense of sight must be exceedingly deficient, 
as they never discover their prey from a distance, however slight, 
and never capture it unless stumbling upon it as if by accident. 
When, however, they do thus stumble upon an unfortunate cat- 
erpillar, grasshopper, or other suitable article of food, a very acute 
sense of touch, chiefly concentrated in their long and constantly 
vibrating antennæ, enables them to seize upon and firmly hold it 
with their powerful, strongly-toothed mandibles, while with their 
maxille or secondary jaws they withdraw the life-juices and soft 
tissues of their struggling victim. They also manifest the im- 
perfection of their vision by making no attempt to escape from 
their human captors, allowing themselves to be picked up as if 
entirely blind. 
They are slow in their movements, walking about with great 
deliberation over their favorite hunting-grounds, the sloping clay 
banks. The only approach to rapidity of motion observed dur- 
ing the summer was in the case of a single individual suddenly 
surprised by the morning sun while at a distance from a suitable 
hiding-place, which he was making frantic exertions to discover. 
In a brief article contributed to this Academy at our last an- 
nual meeting it was stated by Mr. Brous that these insects “ live 
in holes generally made by themselves.” My own observations 
do not corroborate this statement. On the other hand I found 
them invariably coming forth at night from holes made by other 
animals, — most especially from the intricately winding burrows 
of the kangaroo rat (Dipodomys Philippii), by which the clay 
banks are often completely honeycombed. In these burrows 
they take refuge from the direct rays of the sun in the day-time, 
in company with other nocturnal genera, — Eleodes, Pasimachus, 
