= 1878.] Transformations and Habits of Blister-Beetles. 213 
4 
: 
1 
= 
e 
4 
a 
hot sunny southward, one saw no trees, nor plants of fine or 
graceful habit, but only yuccas, century plants, cactus and Dasy- 
lirion, adorning with rigid and stately magnificence the otherwise 
-almost barren rocks. On less rugged portions of these hot un- 
shaded hills is where we look for and find various species of an 
interesting genus (Dalea) of peculiar south-western leguminous 
plants. Some are herbs, others shrubs, with small, very small 
ferny foliage and a profusion of yellow pink or purple corollas set 
usually in exquisite white-feathery calyces. Another characteris- 
tic and very abundant shrub of these ravines and hill sides is an 
oddity of the rose family (Fadlugia paradoxa Torr.), in which the 
flower of a rose, or it might rather be called that of some large 
flowered raspberry, or blackberry (Rubus), is succeeded not by a 
berry of any description, but by a close tuft of dry seeds with 
long silky tails, much like those of a clematis, but finer and 
more graceful, and of a purplish hue. They are borne in great 
profusion and the bush is more showy in seed than in flower. 
But passing upward beyond where all these interesting things are 
found, we come to higher, more open and smoother lands at an 
altitude where snows are more sure to fall in winter, and show- 
ers in summer are more frequent. Here are scattered pines of 
larger growth, and under them grasses are abundant and the wild 
deer graze in safety; masses of blue lupines, with here and there a 
tall stalk of flame-red pentstemon (P. barbatus Torr.), occupy the 
“more open grounds, while, farther upward still, the ravine narrows 
to a gorge a few rods wide. Here we find our streamlet a brook 
shaded by alders and poplars, and the dripping precipices are clad 
with mosses, mimuli and saxifrage, reminding the herbalist here 
upon the borders of Mexico of familiar scenes in far northward 
latitudes, 
ise. 
. 
l 
| 
:0: 
ON THE TRANSFORMATIONS AND HABITS OF THE 
BLISTER-BEETLES.' 
BY CHAS. V. RILEY, A.M., PH.D. 
HE larval habits of the European Cantharis of commerce, as 
also those of its congeners in our own country and in other 
parts of the world, have hitherto remained a mystery, notwith- 
tanding the frequency with which the beetles occur, their great 
— uP permission aom the Transactions of the EEN of Science of Ste 
