Article beginning on page 363.
Psyche 5:363-364, 1888.

Full text (searchable PDF)
Durable link: http://psyche.entclub.org/5/5-363.html

The following unprocessed text is extracted from the PDF file, and is likely to be both incomplete and full of errors. Please consult the PDF file for the complete article.

une 1~go.1 PSYCHE. 363
THE FOSSIL INSECT LOCALITIES IN THE
ROCKY MOUNTAIK REGION.- 'SO One collect- ing fossil insects in the Rocky Mountain region could fail of noting how close was the general resemblance of the rocks at all places where they have been found, ex-
cepting at Flonssant, where the fine,
tough, homogeneous shales found else-
where give place to friable masses of ash interlarded with thin seams of hardened mud. A comparison of the insect remains shows a similar difference. The hymenoptera which abound at Florissant almost disappear in the other localities, while the coleoptera, which hold a third place at Florissant, form the larger proportion of the mass in the other de- posits. To test the opinion foimed by the cursory examination ofspecimens in the field, I have counted the specimens obtained in each of the different localities visited during a single summer, and find the opinion amply confirmed. The localities visited besides Florissant, Colorado, were Roan Mountains in western Colorado, the lower White River! Colorado, and Green River, Wyon~ing.
The first set of columns in the accompany- ing table shows the total number of specimens (regardless of species) obtained during the season's work. separated by orders, (I) in all localities; (2) at Florissant alone; and (3) in theother localities,excluding Florissant; and the second set of columns the same figures reduced to percentages. Nothing could well be more striking than the contrasts in the hymenoptera and coleoptera.
Number of specimens. 1 Percentages.
Orders.
c
-
Hymenoptera ,, . 277
Diptera . . . . . 432
Coleoptera . . . . g&
Herniptern. . . . 18s
Orthoptera. . . . 19
Meuroptera . . . 00
Arachnids. . . . I i~
-.
-
Totals. . . . ' 1820
Entomological Notes,
ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB. A. A. A. %-The
meeting of the club will be held at Indian- apolis, Ind., on Wednesday the 20th of
August at g A.M. Prof. A. J. Cook of the Michigan Agricultural College is the presi- dent.
The venerable naturalist, Prof. Felipe
Poey of Havana, well known to entomolo-
gists for his valuable papers on Cuban in- sects, completed his ninety-first year on the 26th of last May.
He still occupies himself
with natural history studies, and particularly ichthyology.
The Butterflies of the Eastern United
States and Canada, issued last year by the author, Samuel H. Scudder, will hereafter be published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. of Boston, the publishers of Edwards's Butterflies of North America.
The Rev. Seymour St. John's little book
just published in England, called "Larva collecting and breeding" would better have been given simply its second title, "a. hand- book to the larvae of the British Macrolepi- doptera and their food plants," for there is nothing in it about collecting or breeding. It is simply a list of species and their ac- credited food plants and the same reversed. To an American the lists seem full. The
best equipped caterpillais are, for butterflies Euchloe ca~danzines which has 10 food
plants, and for the moths Acronycta aini with IS. Some of the plants are fed upon by a very large number of different caterpillars. Thus a list is given of 104 species feeding on Suerrus robur, Betula alba has 84, Saline caprea 74, Crataeyi-s oxyacantka 60, Polygo- ~um aviculare 48, and so on.
The Institute de segunda ensefianza of
Havana has just acquired the valuable ento- mological collections of Dr. Juan Gundlach who is still untiringly at work, in hiseighti- eth year, on the Cuban fauna. Of his Ento-



================================================================================

PSYCHE. [June 1890.
mologia cubana Vol. I containing the lep- idvptera was published between 1881 and
1886. Vol. 2 containing the hytnenop-
tera, neuroptera and orthoptera is now
passing through the press at the slow rate of a signature of eight pages a month and will not be finished before 1891. The hymenop- tera and neuroptera are already printed. Vol. 3 will contain the remaining orders, "if writes Dr. Gundlach, "my life dure some years more ;"-which all will trust may be the case; indeed when his collections have been transferred he proposes another trip to the mountains of G~mnthnamo in Eastern Cuba, where he has already secured so many fine collections.
INSECTS DESTRUCTIVE TO WATER PIPES. --
And now the coleopterous family Panzz'dae comes under economic suspicion. Pine-
staves of the water pipes of the Ottawa (Can.) water system which have been in use fifteen years are found by Mr. Fletcher, Govern- ment entomologist, to have lost in this time one fourth of their thickness and in places, and especially at the joints, to have been bored through and through.
Mr. Fletcher
regards the destruction as due in the first in- stance to the decaying of a very thin layer of the surface of the wood through the chem- ical action of the river water; and then to the removal of the decayed surface by aquatic insects so as constantly to expose a new sur- face to the same action.
Beetles belonging
to the allied genera Dryofs and Macronychns were found on the injured wood, and in the decayed laver were numerous tracks made
by larvae provisionally referred to these same genera: none have yet been bred. Mr.
Fletcher thinks their presence in such num- bers may possible be due to the unusual
quantity of decaying bark lying in a bay of the Ottawa River, near the inlet of the pipe, where for twenty years logs have been sorted for the lumber mills which gives Ot- tawa its commercial importance. It is now proposed to take the water from a point
higher up the river and to use steel pipes. HABIT OF A DRAGON-FLY.-In the Journal
of the Bombay natural history society (v. 4, no. 3). Mr. E. Giles records a curious fact which ought to have some interebt for entom- ologists. In June 1888 he was standing one morning in the porch of his house, when his attention was attracted by a large dragon-fly of a metallic blue color, about 2h inches long, and with an extremely neat figure, who was cruising backwards and forwards in the
porch in an earnest manner that seemed to show that he had some special object in view. Suddenly he alighted at the entrance of a small hole in the gravel, and began to dig vigorously. sending the dust in small show- ers behind him. "I watched him," says Mr. Giles, "with great attention, and, after the lapse of about half a minute, when the drag- on-fly was head and shouldersdown the hole, a large and very fat cricket emerged like a bolted rabbit, and sprang several feet into the air. Then ensued a brisk contest of
bounds and darts, the cricket springing from side to side and up and down, and the drag- on fly dartingat him the moment he alighted. It was long odds on the dragon-fly, for the cricket was too fat to last, and his springs be- came slower and lower, till at last his enemy succeeded in pinning him by the neck. The dragon-fly appeared to bite the cricket, who, after a struggle or two, turned 'over on his back and lay motionless, either dead or tem- porarily senseless. The dragon-fly then, without any hesitation, seized him by the hind legs, dragged him rapidly to the hole out of which he had dug him, entered him- self, and pulled the cricket in after him, and then, emerging, scratched some sand over the hole and flew away.
Time for the whole
transaction, say, three minutes." Nature, 5 June 1890, v. 42, no. 1075, p. 135.
No. 138-140 were issued 17 March 1890.
No. 165 was issued 21 January 1890.
No. 166 was issued 14 February 1890.
No. 167-168 were issued 20 March 1890.
No. 169 was issued I May, 1890.




================================================================================