^Weihalwei July 18—Since I wrote recently about the ant-lion, so many enquiries have come to me that I feel I should make a further note... Darticularly as I have just read a paragraph in Mr. Sowerbys "Naturalists Note Book" which bears on the subject: I am glad to see that he agrees with me that the ant-lion is found "living only in sandy areas," because that supports my puzzlement as to what one of these queer creatures was doing on top of a rocky mountain, The main point seems to be that/Ahe ant-lion is the larval form of a dragonfly-like insect known as Myrmeleon: and I can Well imagine that in the adult dragonfly form it might be blown up a hill by a typhoon -..forced to lay its eggs in any convenient position... and that the resulting larvae, deprived of their native sand, would have to inlake a living as best they could in the hilltops. Thus we find a longshoreman turned into a mountaineer, just as $0 many. sailors leave the sea to buy a farm. But the point Which still puzzles me is Mr. Sowerby's drawing of the ant-lion—and I cannot find a picture in any other book for comparison: his picture is about twice the natural size and the dimensions are not explained; there should be two lines of white spots running down the sandy coloured back; and in my. specimens (so far as memory serves me) the "pincers" do not
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.