Probably no groups of living things offer greater difficulties to the student of science than do the parasitic insects. The Mallophaga, or bird and mammal biting lice, stand as an example of this. At the present time there is no species of this order or suborder for which we have the complete life history. There is also a paucity of species descriptions, and host records. Much of the lack of knowledge concerning this group of insects is due, no doubt, to the difficulty of obtaining specimens and the greater difficulty of knowing exactly the host from which a given specimen is taken.

It was in the early days of August, as I approached the armory at Boulder, that I came across the nests of Melissodes obliqua Say. Careful examination disclosed eight entrances in an area of four square meters. This had been traversed by automobiles and so was without vegetation. The bees had constructed tunnels which led at first straight down and then suddenly turned off to one side. Ceaselessly, the males of the colony were darting back and forth. Occasionally, a female circled her way in from the fields, her hind legs bright yellow with their heavy loads of pollen. Then, almost inevitably, the males rushed in on all sides. There was a collision in mid-air and a sudden descent to the ground. Before the males could gather themselves together, the female was on her way. Quickly she made her way to the nest, hovered over the entrance, dropped in head first and was gone.

The following descriptions have been taken from specimens in the collection of Professor James G. Needham at Cornell University. Brief diagnostic characters of each have been listed by him in his forthcoming Handbook of North American Dragonflies.

Length 4.5-6 mm.; width 2.2-3 mm. Oblong, moderately convex and elongate, parallel. Head, pronotum, and ventral thoracic sclerites black; apical margin of clypeus and lateral pronotal margins broadly reddish brown; elytra dark reddish brown; legs and abdomen reddish brown; strongly shining.

Male: Length 1.8 mm. Front and face opaque brown. Antennae small, black, arista as long as the face, palpi black; proboscis shining black with a few short yellow hairs; lower orbital cilia whitish.

In rearranging and briefly investigating the species of Lina and some allied genera in our collection, assisted by additional material kindly sent me by Messrs. Carr of Alberta, Hopping of British Columbia, Frost of Massachusetts, and Notman and Shoemaker of New York, the following notes were made, which in some cases correct a few misidentifications or add to the recorded distribution of some species.

The genus Wagneria Desvoidy is represented in America by about a dozen described species, including those named in the present contribution. Two of these I am unable to recognize, the others being included in the key. The two new species differ from the others in the genus by possessing infra-squamal setulae and lacking discals on the intermediate abdominal segments of the males in addition to being larger than the allied species.

Through the courtesy of Professor George Maheux, Provincial Entomologist of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Quebec and Curator of the Quebec Public Museum and Mr. G. S. Walley of the Department of Agriculture of Canada, the writers have recently had the privilege of studying the type specimen of Tetraphleps canadensis Provancher. The specimen is a true Tetraphleps and not a Lycotocoris as was at one time supposed. A comparison with the holotype of T. americana Parshley, kindly loaned for study by Dr. H. M. Parshley of Smith College, shows that this name must stand as a synonym of canadensis. Provancher's description with further notes is given below…..