This genus of dragon flies is one of the groups whose members are accounted rare in collections, though quite abundant in nature. With the exception of three species, two of which have only been obtained in numbers by breeding, few imagoes have been taken. Although I have collected carefully for several years in localities where a few species were common enough, I have seen but three imagoes at large, but I have bred one species by hundreds, and have seen the exuviæ upon the banks of streams by tens of thousands.

Nymphs of this genus seem to prefer the sandy or gravelly beds of clear, rapid streams, flowing through rocky woods. What becomes of the countless imagoes which issue from such places by night in early summer I have not as yet been able to find out.

The sessile abdomen, always without a constriction between the first and second segments, but above all the very large, free, triangularly elongated labrum, which is always much longer than wide at base, the sinuate or ≀-shaped transverse median nervure in the hind wings, and the aborted ocelli, at once distinguished the family.

Most authorities have confused, or at least included this family with the family Stizidæ, which also has a more or less prominent labrum; but in the Stizidæ the ocelli are always distinct, normal, the labrum is most frequently semicircular, always wider than long, while the middle tibiæ have two distinct apical spurs, characters of great taxonomic value, readily recognizable, and which at once separate them from the Bembicidæ.

(7) Chionapsis furfurus, Fitch; 1856-1869. N.

A very common species in Massachusetts, recorded from Amherst, Worcester, Andover, Lawrence, and Methuen, on wild redcherry, pear, wild and cultivated apple, flowering quince, chokeberry, shad-bush, and black alder. It is known from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Georgia, Utah, Kansas, New Jersey, and Washington, D. C., on choke-cherry, wild red cherry, wild and cultivated apple, crab apple, pear, peach, Japan quince, cherry currant, red flowering currant, and European mountain ash.

Vespa diabolica, Sauss., mut. Fernaldi (Lewis).—Prof. C. H. T. Townsend collected last year some specimens of V. diabolica and V. occidentalis on the Rio Ruidoso, N. M. Among the former I find an example which exactly agrees with the description of V. Fernaldi, Lewis, but it is evidently only a form of diabolica.

Hadena (Xylophasia) runata, n. sp.

Ground colour smoky brown or blackish, varying in shade even to a reddish admixture. Head usually a little reddish, with a black band crossing the front. Collar usually paler at the base, crossed by a black line about the middle; usually tipped with paler scales. Thorax with a distinct divided crest, which often contains an admixture of lighter vestiture, patagiæ with paler tips, a blackish submargin, and a disk as dark as the general ground colour. Primaries powdery, mottled, with all the markings well defined; no contrasts, save that the median space is usually darker than the rest of the wing. Basal line geminate, black, including a few whitish scales, and reaching to a narrow, short basal line which ends at the point of junction with the tranverse marking. T. a. line black, geminate, the outer defining line well marked, the inner vague, except at the interval margin, where an oblique black shade extends inward along the margin.

Plagodis approximaria, n. sp.

Fore wings dark ochreous, paler about the faint purplish cloud that rests on internal margin; a cluster of blackish strigæ in centre of basal space on internal margin and a larger cluster in the balck cloud; otherwise the ground colour is without strigæ. T. a. and t. p. lines slightly curved, broad, somewhat clouded, nearer together than usual, blackish brown, the t. p. line the more distinct. Hind wings paler, largely overspread by a purplish shading that extends from a large cluster of dense blackish strigæ at inner angle. Thorax ochre, purplish in front and on the head. Expanse 50 mm.

Dactylopius hymenocleœ, n. sp.—♀. Black when dry, entirely covered and concealed by the firm snow-white ovisac, forming a rounded mass about 4 mm. diam. These masses are adherent to one another, forming very conspicuous white cottony balls on the plant, having a diameter of from ten to twelve mm. The surface of the ovisac is rough, but not at all ribbed. The female, boiled and flattened under a cover-glass, is oval, about 4 mm. long. After being boiled in caustic soda, soaked in alcohol, and mounted in balsam, the insect is found to exhibit two different pigments: one a pale magenta, the other a dark bluish green. Skin with very numerous small circular glands, and a good many rather large dagger-shaped spines, in the caudal region. Legs and antennæ pale brown; legs fairly stout; coxa 99. Femur with trochanter 144, tibia 72, tarsus with claw 60 μ; claw digitules slender, with a very small knob; claw with a minute denticle on the inner side just before the tip; antennæ 7-segmented, the segments measuring as follows in μ:—(1) 28. (2) 25-30. (3) 23-25. (4) 23-31. (5) 15-19. (6) 24-28. (7) 59-64. Embryonic larva large.

In reference to the present controversy my testimony is as follows: I examined, in 1867, Mr. Walker's material. This represented a form unknows to me, undoubtedly a Spilosoma, not a species or form of Hyphantria. I was so struck with this that I drew up a description and carefully compared the palpi and antennæ. From these and the slightly larger size, I felt confident that it was a Spilosoma unknown to me at the time. The description is published in Trans. Am. Ent. Soc., 1868, but I have no copy, unfortunately, at this writing, of the paper. My memory is vivid that I compared it with Hyphantria cunca, and it was not that species nor any form of it. I conjectured even, at the time, that the material might be European with a wrong locality, so dissimilar was it from S. virginica or S. latipennis, the latter form being known to me from Stephen Calverley's collections from Long Island before, long before its description by Stretch.