PREFACE 



THE entomologist of the Harriman Alaska Expedition was 

 Trevor Kincaid, Professor of Biology in the University of the 

 State of Washington, at Seattle. His zeal and activity may be 

 inferred from the fact that in two months he obtained about 

 8,000 insects, representing a thousand species. On the return 

 of the Expedition this material was distributed to a dozen spec- 

 ialists, who have worked up the various groups. The resulting 

 papers, 18 in number, are here brought together in two volumes. 



The collections contained at least half a dozen new genera, 

 344 new species, and a still larger number previously unknown 

 from Alaska. 



In most instances the special papers deal only with the ma- 

 terial brought back by the Expedition, but in a few cases, as in 

 the Hymenoptera, the previously known records from Alaska 

 are added, so that the paper presents a summary of existing 

 knowledge of the group. In one little known group (the Myria- 

 poda) the available data for northwestern North America are 

 assembled. The resulting paper, it is believed, will be of great 

 value to future workers in this neglected field. 



In a few instances authors have treated the types of their new 

 species in a very loose manner, in some cases recording speci- 

 mens from numerous localities, stretching along the coast for 

 more than a thousand miles, as "type specimens" of a single 

 species ! The Editor wishes to disclaim responsibility for the 

 nebulous and undifferentiated conception of a type implied in 

 statements of this kind. 



A number of the papers have been published in the Proceed- 

 ings of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and are here 

 reprinted from the same electrotype plates, so that they may be 

 quoted as the original. Facing each of these papers in an ex- 



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