The TOUHG HATURAUST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Part 72. DECEMBER, 1885. Vol. 6. 



THE ENTOMOLOGICAL YEAR. 



By ALBERT H. WATERS, B.A., F.S.Sc, &c. 



DECEMBER. 



DREAR Winter-time has come ! 

 The once pellucid pool, above whose face 

 The agile dragon-flies did lightly skim, 

 Now frozen hard as adamantine rock, 

 Lies cold and lifeless 'neath the wintry sky. 

 And the oak woods, where late the Emperor soared, 

 Are bare of leaf, and from the naked twigs 

 The icy crystals hang. The verdant sward 

 Lies buried deep beneath the drifted snow. 



Such is the conventional picture of winter-time, but our English climate is 

 the most uncertain in the world, and instead of ice-bound pools, trees white 

 with frost, and meadows buried deep with snow, Christmas-time is as likely as 

 not to present a scene quite the reverse of all this. I have been out many a 

 time entomologising at this time of the year, and a list of the species I have 

 found would astonish by its length those who think December an utterly 

 barren month as far as insect-life is concerned. Not to mention the coleop- 

 tera, of which I have always obtained a goodly number throughout the 

 winter, the lepidoptera alone have made quite a long list. Certainly a large 

 portion of them were pupse, and not imagines or larvse, yet of the latter the 

 number which are feeding throughout this month is not small. Many of 

 them are certainly internal feeders, and therfore removed from observation. 

 Thus the whitish lame of Sesia crabroniformis (bembeciformis) are living in- 

 side the wood of the sallow (Salix capree) ; those of S. tipuliformis in the 

 stems of currant bushes ; those of Myelois cribrum and Chilo phragmitellus 

 in thistle and reed stems respectively ; and Cossus ligniperda in the wood of 

 willow trees. 



Other of the winter-feeding larvae live underground and gnaw the roots of 

 plants, as for instance, the white, brown-headed caterpillar of the Ghost-moth 



