Insects. 



8241 



(B. senilis, B. fragrans, B. Sylvarum, B. Derhamellus or B. Scrimshiranus) not a single 

 specimen was seen during the whole season. The species of solitary bee taken was 

 Megachile circumcinctus, of which I caught a pair on the sands near South Shields, 

 and these were only about one-half the size of the specimens from the same coiony 

 which I took the previous year. During the whole season I only saw one fossorial 

 insect, Crabro dimidiatus, although T kept a sharp look-out for them, the tribe being a 

 great favourite of mine. Ants, I think, also were tolerably numerous: Mr. Perkins 

 and I observed Formica rufa in great plenty in the woods near Bothal, and I noticed 

 Formica nigra in much of its usual numbers when in Cumberland in June. The 

 commoner yellow ants were plentiful also near the ballast heaps at South Shields. 

 Earwigs were neither common nor destructive in gardens, and they were very few in 

 numbers on the sea-coast, where they swarm in ordinary seasons. In Coleoptera some 

 good things were taken, which will be noticed elsewhere. T never recollect a season 

 in which so few sawflies were astir ; the only species noticed was the one which infests 

 the gooseberries. Hemipterous insects were exceedingly scarce, and although the 

 water species were plentiful enough, yet many of them wanted wings, most likely from 

 the deficiency of heat. Of many thousands of Gerris pallidum, seen in the Ouse-burn 

 in October, not one had wings or even wing-cases. I took some small bugs in copuld 

 early in March, which appears rather remarkable, as these insects are in the perfect 

 state only in summer or autumn. Another peculiarity of this remarkable year was the 

 abundance of winged Aphides in May, which were flying in great numbers in the laues 

 on the few warm still days we had towards the end of the month. I beat a grown 

 species (apparently the Callipterus Betulae, Koch's Aphiden, fig. 289), in great numbers 

 out of birch, on the- 18th of May, of which fully one-half had wings. I need scarcely 

 observe that Aphides are produced in spring from eggs laid the previous autumn: these 

 young are all without wings, and females ; they in their turn produce other wingless 

 females alive, and so on through many generations, until towards autumn, when winged 

 males and females appear, and it is this brood which provides for the continuation of 

 the species, and which, taking wing, are often forced upon our notice by their numbers 

 on warm still days. Midges were also not wanting, as I found to my cost when beating 

 the hedges in Cumberland. Neither were " clegs " wanting, and I noticed a rare 

 Tabanus (T. ausiriacus) much too abundant for the comfort of a farmer's horses near 

 Lannercost. — Thomas John Bold, in ' Transactions of Tyneside Naturalists Field Club, 

 vol. v. p. 219. 



Entomological Notes for the year 1861. — Not only in our own district, but through- 

 out Europe, have entomologists been complaining that there are no insects ; from the 

 beginning of the spring to the commencement of the winter there has been a very 

 great scarcity of insect life. Cold and wet as last year was, larvae of all kinds seemed 

 abundant ; and it was thought that this season, if fine, would have been an unusually 

 good one for insect hunters : these predictions have not been verified ; the prophets 

 prophesied falsely, and, contrary to all expectations, insects never were scarcer. Bees, 

 beetles, butterflies and bugs, as our cabinets can testify, have made a sorry show. 

 Some usually common have not put in an appearance, of others perhaps one or two 

 solitary specimens have been seen, but nothing has beeu abundant, save and except 

 wasps ; these certainly have proved the rule : they have had it all their own way, not 

 only here but in the south as well; " from Jthn o'Groat's to Land's End'' everybody 

 says we have plenty of wasps. There was an abundance of them in the spving: at 

 Gibside, when we went to seek Andreuidae, we found nothing but Vespidae ; when we 



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