2 Winter Insects of Eastern New York. (May, 
it with them, bestowing upon it the specific name hyemalis. But, 
inasmuch as it differed from the Panorpide in some prominent par- 
ticulars, such as possessing the faculty of leaping, and being 
furnished with an ovipositor similar to many grasshoppers and 
crickets, Panzer, at a subsequent day, placed it under the genus 
Gryllus. More recent naturalists, however, have concurred in 
the propriety of the location originally given by Linneus, and to 
obviate, in some degree, the incongruity of its situation, Latreille 
was induced to construct for it an independent genus, placed be- 
side Panorpa, to which genus he ee the name Boreus. The 
hyemalis has remained to this day the sole species of this genus, 
no other insect having similar characters, having been cliscovered 
in any part ofthe esi Two years since, in the month of March, 
searching carefully upon the melting snow, to find if possible in 
this vicinity, a rare and singular insect which has been lately dis- 
covered in Canada—the Chionea valga, a fly destitute of wings— 
though unsuccessful, my labors were rewarded with an equally 
acceptable return, an insect cogeneric with the curious Boreus 
hyemalis of Europe. Since that time, I have met with numer- 
ous specimens, and have also found in the same situations, several 
individuals of a third species pertaining to the same genus. From 
these specimens I draw the following detailed characters of the 
Genus BOREUS, Latreiile. 
Polished and shining. Head sunk into the thorax to the eyes, 
which are prominent; ocelli wanting. Rostrum long-conical, 
twice or thrice as long as_the head from which it gradually ta- 
pers, projecting downwards at right angles with the body, or more 
or less inclined backwards under the breast, its front side clothed 
with minute hairs. Maxillary palpi reaching beyond the tip of 
the beak; terminal joint longest and slightly thicker than the 
others, long ovate; basal joints cylindrical, half as long as they 
are broad. Antenne inserted in the middle of the front, their ba- 
ses nearer to the margin of the eyes than to each other, reaching 
half the length of the abdomen in the females and to its tip in the 
males, thickly set with very short minute hairs; filiform, hardly 
thicker towards their tips, composed of twenty-three joints; two 
basal joints thickest, the first sub-cylindric, the second obovate; 
succeeding joints short-cylindric, compact; terminal joint ovate. 
Thorax cylindrical, scarcely as broad asthe head. Wings, in the 
males, rudimentary and not adapted for flying. Upper pair rep- 
resented by two coriaceous pseud-elytral scales which reach rath- 
er more than half the length of the abdomen; these are broadest 
at their base and gradually taper to an acute point, the length be- 
ing over four times as great as the breadth; they are very convex 
above and concave on their under sides, and thus when detached, 
