OCTOBER 
819 
C — Notwithstanding a few pretty smart frosts^ we have 
had some very pleasant weather lately ; and though the 
days are warm^ the midges^ musquitoes^ and such like pesti- 
ferous insects,, have ceased to molest us. 
F. — In the autumn of 1835^ though by no means a 
cold season^ we had, on the 30 th of September^, a fall of 
snow^ which continued without intermission throughout the 
day ; so that in some places in the neighbourhood it stood 
on the ground to the depth of fifteen inches. We were dis- 
mayed with the anticipation of an early and severe winter^ 
but the snow vanished almost as rapidly as it had fallen^ 
and the winter did not set in for many weeks afterward, 
though it proved unusually severe in December and Feb- 
ruary. 
C. — I caught lately in the house, a fine Noctua, the 
Crimson Under wing ( Catocala ? ) ; and on the 25 th 
ult. late in the evening, I saw several fireflies in the grass 
at intervals, but none in flight : one^ which I secured, proved 
to be a larva. Oh ! look what a family of young bugs 
on this decaying stick ; some in larva, others in pupa ; the 
abdomens of all are scarlet. How closely they are congre- 
gated together ! 
F, — I have often discovered broods or nests of this 
kind, and invariably find them thus associated together : I 
suppose they are the young of a small species, which is 
black, with a scarlet transverse line on the thorax, and two 
scarlet spots on the scutellum f Cydnus Bilineata ? ), A 
few days since, I took, on a dunghill, a Staphylinus, which I 
had not met with before : the head horn coloured ; thorax 
and elytra brown and black, mottled ; abdomen silvery- 
black, with a tawny central line, the fourth and fifth seg- 
ments grey ( Staphylinus Chrysocephalus ? ), A little black 
Chafer is numerous, the thorax projecting like a horn over 
the head, much more prominent in some than in others 
