it 
er’ 
es 
322 General Notes. [March, : 
In connection with the above narrative I should like to askif 
Jarvae of the seventeen-year Cicada living on the roots of a tres, 
would be destroyed by cutting down the tree and killing its roots, 
especially during the earlier stages of their existence—Z W 
Claypole. | 
[The facts narrated are not so wonderful as they at first appear 
The trees generally haying been felled only a few years prior to 
the previous appearance of the Cicadas, seventeen years before, 
these, doubtless, came out all over the piece of cleared ground, — 
and congregated on the isolated tree that had been left, filling its 
branches with eggs which supplied the ground beneath the tree 
with an unusual quantity of young Cicadas. This isolated tree was 
_ also cut down after the new generation had nearly acquired full | 
growth. These insects had, doubtless, during the later years o! 
growth fed on the roots of said tree, always with the head toward 
the butt, or in the direction of the increasing size of the 
They had, probably, for nearly seventeen years been directed 10 
the same point which they made for upon issuing from the ground 
as pupe. This is one explanation of the facts, though we fully 
recognize that there is much to us inexplicable about the sense of : 
direction in insects. Dr. H. A. Hagen recently mentions 
(Wature, Dec. 21, 1882) a singular case of the pupa of Ophio- 
gomphus making direct tracks over the sand from the waten, 
whence it issued to a solitary willow tree 100 feet away. We 
. believe that the destruction of the roots of the tree would prow 
fatal to the Cicada larvze except where it occurred after they had 
reached within two or three years of their full growth.—C y. R] 
FooD-HABITS OF MEGILLA MACULATA.—In his investigations 
on the food of Carabidæ and Coccinellidæ, Professor S. A. F orbs 
records his observations, among others, on the above-named sp? 5 
cies, of which he dissected fourteen specimens. In eleven T 
mens, collected at various times around Normal, Ill, the 1% 
i Aphids) 
_ While these investigations tend to show that our T 
more phytophagous than entomophagous, at least im Cere dos 
calities, yet the fact of its food consisting of fungi and para 
not renders the species injurious to agriculture. What wê rested 
on this last subject in the Naturatist for April, 1881, P. 326,1 “a 
solely on a communication from one of our correspondent ii 
George B. P. Taylor, of St. Inigoes, Md. Our efforts t° tiie 
Mr. Taylor’s statement by experiments in vivaria gave ” grape 
results, the beetles refusing to eat tender leaves of COM>” 
