62 
THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
winter; here they feed in the heart of 
the gall, as many as six or eight in com- 
pany, till their larva-life is at an end, 
when they assume their pupa stage, not 
to emerge from their bark-covered knot 
till the month of May. Still they have 
instinctively consumed the wood here 
and there quite up to the bark, so that 
the gall-gnats may the more readily effect 
their exit. Through these tiny apertures 
the insect forces its way, leaving its cere- 
clothes in the hole. But I hasten to 
give the description of the imago, which 
I copy in part from Professor Loew’s 
‘ Monograph on the Cecidomyiae,’ in 
part from Mr. Walker’s ‘ Diptera ’ : — 
C. Salicis. “ After death nearly alto- 
gether brown. In life the abdomen of 
the female deep blood-red, or with broad 
bands of the same. Under side with 
a few spots on the thorax. Abdomen 
silvery below, with rings of white glisten- 
ing hairs. Wings dusky. Oviduct long 
and pointed, orange-coloured, not fading 
after death.” The insect seems, according 
to Mr. Walker, to be met with in Eng- 
land, Scotland and Ireland, forming 
woody galls on the twigs of Salix aurita 
and C, cinerea, and more rarely on those 
of S. Caprcea, on which mine have 
occurred. — Peter Inchbald, Storthes 
Hall, near Huddersfield ; May 14, 1861 . 
SyrphidcB. — The woods in May are 
merry with the hoverer-flies; we see them 
at every turn, hovering motionless in the 
air, like the kestrel among birds, in 
search of their mates, keeping up all the 
while a shrill continuous humming. The 
earlier stages of the Syrphida are worthy 
of consideration. The eggs of not a few 
are laid by the parent insect on the 
leaves of such plants as are infested with 
Aphides ; here they hatch, and the grubs 
prove as formidable enemies to the plant- 
lice as the larvae of the lacewing-fly 
itself. Their form is leech-like ; after the 
manner of other dipterous larvae, they are 
not furnished with feet or eyes; these, in- 
deed, they do not .seem to need, as they 
have only to stretch their lithe form 
to get at their stupid prey. Reaumur 
has described with some minuteness their 
organ of suction; it consists exteriorly, 
he says, of a three-pointed barb open at 
the end, and furnished with a sucker. 
The barb serves to pierce the skin and 
the sucker to pump up the juices of the 
body of the Aphis; this piston-movement 
is continued till nothing remains of the 
victim but the dry and shrivelled skin. 
When the larva is full-grown it attaches 
itself, by means of a viscous fluid, to 
various stems or twigs ; the body becomes 
curtailed, but retains soujething of its 
former shape. 'The pupa-case is variously 
mottled, sometimes with a chain-work of 
spots on the back, sometimes with darkish 
dots. It is somewhat singular that the 
imago makes its escape at the thicker 
end of the case, and the empty cocoons 
may still be seen adhering to the boles of 
trees, more especially the beech. One I 
found last autumn was glued on a fern- 
frond, and I succeeded in hatching its 
tenant: another more recently on one of 
the thread-mosses {Bryum Cigulatum). 
The Syrphida that are so predaceous in 
the larva state feed chiefly in the winged 
state on the nectar of flowers. — Ibid ; 
May 18, 1861. 
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE 
TINEINA. 
The names of subscribers for Vols. VI. — 
X., at lOs. per volume, received up to 
Saturday night. May 18th ; — 
1. Bond, F. 
2. Hartwright, J. H. 
3. Russell, W. T. 
4. Kenderdine, F. 
6. Killingback, H. W. 
6. M‘Lachlan, R. 
7. Latch ford, W. H. 
8. Barrett, C.G. 
