INSECTS OF THE PACIFIC 265 



INSECTS OF THE PACIFIC 



Pbofessoe VERNON L. KELLOGG 



WHEX one speaks of the insects of the Pacific, they are the insects 

 of the Pacific shores and Pacific islands that one refers to. 

 For with all the amazing adaptiveness of insects to variety of habitat 

 and habit, and with all the pressure of enormous numbers of species and 

 individuals to drive them far and farther and into all the available 

 places of earth, the insects have, curiously, so far not invaded the oceans. 

 Although they constitute of known living animal kinds a full two thirds, 

 perhaps three fourths, they are restricted in habit to but one third part 

 of the earth's surface, to wit, its dry land and fresh and brackish waters. 

 The real salt sea is tenantless of insects. A few long-legged surface- 

 treading kinds are found on ocean waters far from land, but these are 

 really inhabitants of surface sea-weed patches, which, like their fresh- 

 water cousins, the familiar water-striders or skaters of ponds and quiet 

 stream-pools, can run or glide quickly over the water's surface, denting 

 but not breaking the supporting surface film. 



There are also a few small kinds which haunt the beaches and rocks 

 between tide lines for sake of the rich harvest of food thrown up by the 

 waves. Such a kind is a little long-legged fly with atrophied wings, 

 which lives on the headlands of the California shore in the Monterey 

 Bay region. When the tide is out it runs actively about, looking like a 

 small slender-bodied spider, over the rough, damp rocks between tide- 

 times, seeking bits of organic matter thrown up by the waves that dash 

 over the rocks at high tide. When the waters come back these odd little 

 flies seek refuge under small silken nets they have spun across shallow 

 depressions in the rocks. They cling desperately to the under side of the 

 protecting silken mesh, while the great waves dash and break over them. 

 Of course they are much of the time actually submerged in salt water. 

 But they stand it. 



Recently a similar and closely allied fly has been found on the shores 

 of bleak South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic about 500 miles east 

 of Patagonia. And another tide-rock fly of like habits is known from 

 the cold and tempestuous Kerguelen Island of the South Indian Ocean. 



The insects of the Pacific Islands are, however, more conspicuous by 

 the kinds familiarly known all over our continent than by the sorts pe- 

 culiar to the islands. In fact, what with the same old house-flies and 

 blue-bottles, mosquitoes and fleas, cockroaches and bedbugs, and other 

 familiar close companions of man, the insect fauna of a Pacific island 

 or of the Pacific coast of America is likely to be disappointingly familiar 

 and familiarly troublesome. 



