The Cucujidæ constitute a small family of beetles of depressed, often elongate form, the antennæ lengthened in many species, giving them a somewhat characteristic appearance, which, while recalling the Cerambycidæ, renders them, nevertheless, easily recognized. They may be technically distinguished from the allied Clavicorn families by the long elytra, the five-jointed tarsi (the hind ones sometimes only four-jointed in the males), the rounded or oval anterior coxæ, the middle ones with externally open cavities and the posterior separate. The ventral segments are sub-equal in length. The larvæ, so far as known, are flattened grubs, with distinct antennæ and several ocelli; the terminal segments often with hooks or tubercles.

The following table, adapted frorn Brunner von Wattenwyl and Stal, will enable any one quickly to determine the genera in his collection of U. S. Phasmidæ. Our species are few in number and all apterous. Only one of them, Diapheromera femorata (Say), extends into Canada.

A1 Tibiæ not furnished at apex beneath with a sunken areola to receive the base of the tarsi when bent upon them. (All of our genera of this division belong to the Bacunculidæ, in which the antennæ are much longer than the anterior femora and furnished with at least thirty joints, and the median segment is much shorter than the metanotum.)

Mr. J. B. Lembert has kindly sent me some alcoholic larvæ of A. mariposa, and I may record a few points in comparison with the eastern A. octomaculata. Mr. Lembert has given the life history quite fully in the December number of the Canadian Entomologist, but our species have not been compared. The larva is especiaily interesting, as being the second one discovered in this genus. We have long been familiar with that of A. octomaculata, and everybody has described it; but the other species, though somewhat numerous, have remained unknown.

on 24th May Mr. Lachlan Gibb took a female, which he left alive to get eggs, a number of which were laid between the 25th and 29th. On the 14th June the eggs were hatching, and the larvæ were offered butternut leaves, which they eat readily, and matured very rapidly. About the 27th of the month, Mr. Gibb kindly gave me four of these larvæ which were then apparently more than half grown. They moulted once only, so far as my observations went, after I received them, and on 12th July three spun their cocoons, the fourth doing this on the 16th. Early in August Mr.Gibb asked me to take charge of his cocoons, and keep them with mine, as giving a better opportunity of getting another lot of eggs next season, and on 20th August I was surprised to find that one of Mr. Gibb's cocoons had disclosed the imago, a ♀.

In 1869 Signoret described a species from Switzerland as Chionaspisalni It was found on the bark of the alder (Alnus communis). This species has never been seen in America, but in 1883 Comstock announced a form from alder and Viburnum as Chionaspis Lintneri. Since the latter date our knowledge of the matter seems to have remained without additions. Mr. James Fletcher has just sent me a Chionaspis plentifully infesting the bark of Betula papyrifera from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, about 46° N. lat. I examined this with interest, owing to the locality and the host plant, and on comparing it with Comstock's account of C. Lintneri, I have no doubt that it is the same.

In the concluding volume of his admirable work on “American Spiders and their Spinning Work,” Page 47, Dr. McCook gives the experiences of Mr. H. O. Forbes, and myself, with two species of spiders, whose forms and habits of spinning webs on leaves, together with the peculiar coloration of their bodies, gives them a deceptive resemblance to the droppings of birds. Dr. McCook tries to account for the phenomena of this protective resemblance, by attributing it to the results of natural selection.

In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London for 1892, Mr. W. Schaus describes as new 180 species of “Bombycid” moths from Mexico and various parts of South America, with three “new genera.” Of these, one is located in the Lasiocampidæ and two in the Bombycidæ. All these generic descriptions are utterly inadequate, and the question should be raised seriously whether names founded on such descriptions should be recognized. We are accustomed to believe that the classification of Herrich-schaffer is still used by lepidopterists, at least in its fundamental features; but in these descriptions the word “vein” does not appear. The description of the Lasiocampid is the longest of the three, yet the author gives but eight characters by which to identify his genus. Five of these are common to nearly all the genera of the family; two others appear in several genera already well known, and the genus must be distinguished from the one hundred and forty odd genera of Lasiocampidæ already catalogued, by the female having an expanse of wing of 95 mm., and a short abdomen, “not extending beyond the secondaries!”

A paper giving biologic notes on some New Mexico Coleoptera was published in “Insect Life,”, Vol. V., p.37–40; and a paper treating of the blister-beetles or meloids of New Mexico and Arizona, in “Psyche,” 1894, p. 100–102. The species mentioned in the latter not at all. These three papers, therefore, will serve as a catalogue, or list with notes, of all the Coleoptera observed by the writer in New Mexico and Arizona except a few, the names of which it has been impossible to get from those to whom they were sent for determination.