716 General Notes. [July, 
and very deeply cleft, each fork ending in a short lateral excurved 
hook, but with no setæ. This form lives in a slight cocoon, where 
it has no need of hooks. 
In Bombycidz, such as Eacles imperialis, which enters the earth 
and makes no cocoon, the use of the large caudal spine is as plain 
as in the pupz of the Sphinges; so also in the species of Anisota 
and Dryocampa. 
In the Geomtrids and Tortricids there are, in the abdominal 
spine and hooks, excellent generic and specific characters, as I 
have found in different species of Teras, etc—A. S. Packard. 
SWARMING OF A DunG-BEETLE, APHODIUS INQUINATUS.—About 
the first of last October, while riding along a country road near 
Ripon, my attention was attracted to a dark mass of living matter 
in the road. On examination it proved to be a host of Aphodius 
inguinatus, engaged with horse dung. They were in two or three 
masses, whose areas averaged perhaps three square feet each, and 
were piled up two or three deep. So many, too, were flying about 
in the air that as I rode along I could, with a single motion of the 
hand, catch from two or three to half a dozen. Nor were they 
confined to this one place, for they appeared in considerable num- 
bers at a distance of at least a mile from the point at which I first 
noticed them.— C. Dwight Marsh, Ripon, Wis. 
INSECT PESTS ON THE PaciFic Coast.—California seems to be 
fields in Alamada, Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties are being 
very seriously injured by the Hessian fly, an insect which has 
hitherto been supposed not to occur on the Pacific coast. Pro- 
fessor Riley, the United States Entomologist, has received speci- 
mens, and they prove to be the true Hessian fly. 
EntomotocicaL Notes,—In Siebold and Kalliker’s Zeitschrift, 
issued May 8th, A. Sommer has an elaborate and well illustrated 
article on the anatomy and histology of the large common Pod- 
uran, Macrotoma plumbea; the descriptions, however, do not ap- 
pear to be comparative. In the same number is an essay, with 
many illustrations, on the embryology of the mole cricket (Gryl- 
lotalpa), by A. Korotneff. Another paper on the embryology 
of insects is one by Dr. Tichomirow, on the earlier stages of de- 
velopment of the silk worm (Bombyx mori). His observations 
il with the process of segmentation, the first development of 
the heart, and on the occurrence of an inner skeleton in the head 
_ Of the insect. He then discusses the chemical properties of tne 
= eggs. His paper was presented to the Physiological Society of 
_ Berlin, and is reported in Nature for April 30.——In the Quar- 
ly Fournal of Microscopical Science, for April, Sidney J. Hickson 
