104 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Mr. Schwarz presented an informal paper entitled " Notes 

 on Guatemala." He stated, by way of introduction, that Mr. 

 Barber and he had recently returned from a short trip to 

 Guatemala for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, most of 

 their time being spent in the province of Alta Vera Paz. 

 Guatemala has been more written about than any other Central 

 American country. Doctor Sapper spent twelve or thirteen 

 years in Alta Vera Paz and has written a most interesting book 

 concerning the region. The entire country made up of British 

 Honduras, Costa Rica, Yucatan, and Panama is one solid 

 tropical forest. The plateau region of Guatemala, of which 

 Alta Vera Paz is a part, is drier than the country of the lower 

 levels and bears some resemblance to the plateau regions of 

 Mexico and the United States. One peculiarity of Guatemala, 

 however, is that the mountain ranges run from east to west. 

 There are three of these ranges, of which the southernmost is 

 the highest. Some of the peaks are 12,000 or 13,000 feet high 

 and have never been scaled. 



Regarding cotton raising in Alta Vera Paz and the cotton- 

 protecting ant or kelep (Ectatomma tuberculatum Oliv.) Mr. 

 Schwarz stated that there was no wild cotton plant in that 

 country, but some remarkable varieties of cotton are cultivated 

 there which need no protection whatever from the cotton boll 

 weevil (Anthonomus grandis Boh.). In Guatemala cotton is 

 grown continuously and there is no intermittent season as in 

 the United States. The arborescent cotton found there is not 

 native and it reproduces throughout the year as do the other 

 forms of cotton. On this arborescent cotton the boll weevils 

 multiply and it is this cotton which needs protection from these 

 insects. In regard to the kelep colonies, some of them are 

 insectivorous and others not. Those which are insectivorous 

 will eat any insect which occurs on the cotton, and do not con 

 fine themselves to boll weevils. 



The amount of rainfall in Guatemala is astonishing, and this 

 accounts largely for the immense forests. There is a scarcity 

 of roads and clearings and this makes collecting difficult, as it 

 is almost impossible to penetrate the tropical jungle. 



Large numbers of brillant butterflies are to be seen in the 



