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this insect. I inclose two very imperfect specimens that were found dead and have 
lost most of their charm. Can you give me any information about them? I am 
unable to get a living or perfect specimen. 
Yours, respectfully, 
CHARLES HEBARD. 
I was able with some certainty to identify the fragments which accom- 
panied this letter as those of the carabid Nomius pygmeus, but having 
no specimen of this species in our collection for comparison, one of Mr. 
Hebard’s specimens was sent to the Entomological Division of’ the 
Department of Agriculture, at Washington, and the identification con- 
firmed by Mr. E. A. Schwarz, who also sent me several references relat- 
ing to its previous capture in the United States. 
It was by this time September, and the odor was less often noticed 
and finally disappeared entirely without my securing a single specimen 
in my own locality, and it must be confessed that I still had a lingering 
doubt as to this explanation of the nuisance from which we had suf- 
ferred so long. True, it accounted satisfactorily for all the observed 
phenomena except the magnitude of the smell itself, but it did not 
seem possible that such a minute beetle—hardly a quarter of an inch 
in length—could be the author of such a volume of odor. During the 
present season, however, I have satisfied myself on this score com- 
pletely, and have taken the beetle ‘in the act” at least half a dozen 
times. Some of these specimens are here for examination by anyone 
interested, and one—a captive for the past three weeks—is still alive 
and presumably able to demonstrate the strength of his position. As 
little seems to be on record regarding this species, and as it appears to 
be nowhere very common, the few facts which have come to my knowl- 
edge lately may be of interest. 
That the species is by no means uncommon in this locality, Ingham 
County, is proved by the fact that during hot, damp weather an even- 
ing seldom passes that we do not smell it, and sometimes the odor is 
noted adozen times in a single night. Very often it becomes necessary 
to go into the house and close the doors and windows until the smell 
has disappeared. Not only is this true of my own residence, but the 
same facts have been noticed about several other houses on the campus, 
and recently at a lawn party in Lansing the smell became so bad that 
guests were constrained to leave the grounds. In one instance Il was 
awakened in the middle of the night with a choking sensation and 
found the room filled with the well-known effluvia, which streamed in 
through the window screen. 
Sometimes the stench lasts only a few seconds, sometimes comes and 
goes at short and irregular intervals, sometimes lasts for half an hour 
or more. The beetles seem to fly only at night and to throw out the 
smell only when attacked or at least threatened by an enemy. 
After a long hunt I discovered my first specimen struggling in a 
spider’s web in acorner of the piazza, and since that time have obtained 
many more by looking in all the webs near the point at which the 
