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.

Allied to simplex Uhler, but distinguished by the fine, uniformly pale pubescence, shorter rostrum and more tumid frons.

♂ .Length 5 mm., width 1.8 mm. Head: width 1.09 mm., vertex 666 mm.; frons more tumid than in simplex, pale greenish, becoming fuscous each side of frons and a spot each side of vertex. Rostrum, length 1.09 mm., just attaining hind margin of sternum, pale greenish, last two segments blackish. Antennae: segment I, length .42mm.; II, 1.6 mm.; III, 1.18 mm.; IV, broken; black. Pronotum: length .72 mm., width at base 1.54 mm.; calli becoming blackish on hind margins.

During June and July of 1926 while doing marine investigation at Tofino, Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, I had the opportunity of examining certain birds for external parasites. The results from some hosts were so far removed from the normal Mallophagan population of most birds that it seemed worth while recording them at the time.

Early this spring (1928) several complaints were received by the Department of Biology of the University of Toronto, of infestations of dwelling houses by Dermestids. The most pronounced case was in a new house in the newer section of North Toronto where beetles had been appearing in such numbers that their presence and continued reoccurrence was driving the tenants to hysterics and to the point of moving out of the house. Specimens brought in proved to be Anthrenus scrophulariae Linn. larvae and adults.

This insect was first known in 1876, near Fremont, Nebraska, where it was taken and named. It then disappeared from that vicinity, its disappearance caused, it has been surmised, by the severe grasshopper invasions of 1875 and 1876, and was unknown until 1911 when it was reported as doing much injury to small grains in Alberta, Canada. During the succeeding years it appears to have moved south, or, possibly, to have multiplied locally, and in 1919 it was doing noticeable damage to crops in eastern Montana and western North Dakota. Its chief injury was to wheat and corn but it also attacked rye, barley, oats and, to a limited extent, flax and millet, also potatoes.

My first work with the comrnon mantid, Stagmomantis carolina John began accidentally. One afternoon in early May, at Dallas, Texas, a number of egg masses of the mantid were placed on my desk for inspection. In looking them over I noticed that several had been parasitized and that in others the nymphs had already emerged. I paid very little attention to the unhatched eggs. The next morning May 7, 1927, my desk was covered with numbers of ungainly little brownish green creatures that raced madly about and made frantic efforts to hide behind books and papers. Thirty of these mantid nymphs were captured and placed under a glass lantern globe. A week later a second egg mass hatched. These two broods, together with a stray nymph I found, furnished me with material for observations throughout the summer.

Attention is called to some characters used by the writer. The dorso-central bristles are numbered from the anterior edge of the mesonotum designating the bristle in front of the transverse suture as the first dorso-central. Hering (1927) numbers them in the reverse direction calling the bristle in front of the transverse suture the fourth dorso-central. Previous papers on the chaetotaxy of Diptera have not numbered the dorso-central bristles. The number and arrangement of the setae along the lower and hind margin of the cheeks also lend good characters. The writer speaks of the cheeks collectively as the portion between the eyes and the mouth including the gena or wangen arrd the bucca. The term occiput has been used to designate the whole of the back of the head. The color of the occiput has been found valuable especially when the yellow of the cheeks continues back of the eye. In some cases the yellow of the cheeks is interrupted near the vertex by the black of the occiput.

The preservation of the eggs of buttetflies and moths as objects for study, has always been found a very difficult matter. The structures of their shells are so delicate and porous that if the eggs are allowed to dry either naturally or otherwise, they shrink quite out of shape due to the evaporation of the fluid part of their contents and to prevent this shrinkage by immersing the eggs in various liquids has not been fonnd convenient for their later examination.

During the months of May and June, 1927, I was stationed with the gipsy moth scouts at Henrysburg, near Lacolle, P. Q. In connection with the control measures for this pest the trees in the infested area were banded with burlap. The bands were attached to the trees in the following way:—a strip of burlap about 7 inches wide was placed loosely around the trunk of the tree at a height of 5 feet from the ground. This was tied in place by a piece of twine passed around its centre. After this had been done the upper part of the burlap was folded down so that a double layer hung from the twine. It thus offered an excellent hiding place for insects during the day.

Definite records of injury by the larch sawfly (Lugaeonematus erichsoni Hartig.) in North America only date back to 1881 when Hagen records the insect from Massachusetts. Horv long it had existed on the continent previous to that date is uncertain, but judging from its distribution at the time it was first reported, we may safely conclude that it had been present for a number of years. There is indeed a significant statement by Audubon in which reference is made to the larches being stripped, by a “green caterpillar some three quarters of an inch in length,” which if referable to this sawfly would take our records back to the beginning of the last century.

In collecting adults of the armyworm, and other moths for oviposition studies, a simple method of capture at baits was found useful. An electric flashlight, having a flat lens, was used with a flat-bottomed vial three-quarters of an inch in diameter, straight sided and about five inches deep. It will be found that when the bottom of the vial is placed against the lens of the flashlight both can be firmly grasped in the right hand.

The stucly of the arthropod head offers some of the most interesting and important evidence indicating the paths of development followed in the evolution of the various types of arthropods, but the evidence from this source has not been brought together, and nrost of the important types of head capsule have not been figured. The present paper, and the one following it, are offered with a view to supplying this needed information; and in these papers especial attention has been paid to the Crustacea, since these furnish the proto-types of many of the modifications met with in the Insecta, Chilopoda, Diplopoda, etc., and the carcinologists have neglected to furnish us with figures of these important forms.

notice of printer's error. Description No. 15 in the December, 1927 issue should read—Lycaena helloides (Bdv.), tr. f. sternitzkyi, instead of Lycaena thoe (Guer.), tr. f. sternitzkyi. Author's manuscript, as submitted. stands correct and illustration No. 15 is obviously not a thoe (Guer.).

Length 2.5-3.2 mm.; width 1.7-2 mm. Oblong-oval, moderately robust and convex; red or reddish-yellorv. Head three-fourths as long as wide; finely, sparsely, and uniformly punctate: vertex with two or three coarse punctures. Antennae concolorous; the second and third segments subequal in length; the club and stem subequal in length.

As is indicated by the numbering of the figures in the accompanying plates, the following discussion of the head capsule of lower Arthropods is a continuation of the discussion of the head capsule of higher Arthropods given in a previous paper (Canadian Entomologist, LX. 1928, p. 129). The figures were numbered consecutively throughout all of the plates which were originally intended for inclusion in a single paper, and the original numbering has been retained in the accompanying plates (despite the fact that limitation of space necessitated dividing the original discussion into two parts) because reference was made to certain of the accompanying figures in the previous paper, and it would create confusion to later change the numbers which had been referred to in a previous paper. On this account, the accompanying plates begin with “Fig. 55.” instead of “Fig. I.”

Phyllotreta liebecki Schaeffer, described from Florida, and recorded by the writer (Entom. Amer., VIII, n.s., 1927, p. 27) from Louisiana, Texas, and Plummer's Island, Md., has recently been recognized lrom specimens forwarded for identification by Theo. H. Frison, Illinois State Natural History Survey, from Quincy, Ill., June 11-30. 1883, and Grand Tower, Ill., August 6, 1909.

Few political areas in North America offer so much in the way of interest and instruction to the student of the geographical distribution of bumblebees as the Province of Alberta in western Canada. This is due not only to the fact that extremes in elevation between certain portions of Alberta bring together species of pronounced northern and southern tendencies, a condition duplicated in many parts of western North America, but likewise to the fact that Alberta is a meeting ground of species with decided eastern and western affinities. A somewhat similar state of affairs, though less marked, occurs in the Dakotas as attested by a study of approximately 900 specimens of bumblebees from South Dakota submitted to me for determination by Professor H. C. Severin and recorded by him in the “Sixteenth Annual Report of the State Entomologist of South Dakota,” 1925, pp. 17-20.

On the first of April 1927, the following letter, together with the tentative list of unknown nymphs referred to, was sent by the author to the following twelve Entomologists interested in American Odonata: Dr. C. S. Brimley, Dr. P. P. Calvert, Mr. W. T. Davis, Dr. Philip Garman. Dr. C. H. Kennedy. Mr. B. E. Montgomery, Dr. R. A. Muttkowki, Dr. R. H. Horve, Dr. R. C. Osborne, Dr. F. M. Root, Dr. E. M. Walker, and Mr. E. B. Williamson.

This species was described by Garrett (1925) from a single female taken at Cranbrook, B. C. The description of the male was added by Johannsen (1926) from specimens (1 ♂, 2 ♀ ) collected in Yellowstone Park. The life-cycle is now completed from material taken in S. E. Alaska in 1926.

The recent acquisition, through the kindness of Rev. L. M. Stöhr, of exuviae of Gomphus amnicola Walsh, accompanied by adults found emerging, led the writer to examine such specimens of allied forms in the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology as were available for comparison. As these proved inadequate for the purpose, I appealed to Professor C. H. Kennedy and Mr. E. B. Williamson and, through their kind and prompt response, I obtained sufficient material for the study of those species most nearly related to G. amnicola, viz., the members of the Stylurus group.