156 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [April, '12 



Hibernation of Cicindela senilis (Coleop.). 



By FRANK S. BLAISDELL, SR., San Francisco, California. 



It has been my custom for several years to spend the Thanks- 

 giving Holidays at Vine Hill, Contra Costa Co., California. 



Vine Hill is a railroad station on the Santa Fe Railroad, 

 about three miles south of Benecia Bay. The region is settled 

 up, and the land divided up into ten- or twenty-acre ranches, 

 fruits and chickens being the main productions. 



The marsh land, bounding the southern shores of Benecia 

 Bay, sends an arm inland to the south for quite a distance, 

 and the irregular edge of this saline area reaches the ranch 

 at which I stop. The country in general is rolling ; hills of two 

 or three hundred feet elevation are quite common. Upon one 

 hill in particular there are a number of white oaks on th.e 

 northern and northwestern slopes. 



The weather was moderately cold and dry on November 

 24th to the 27th, 1910, and insects at this time are all in hiber- 

 nation. Collecting consists mainly in hunting out all crevices 

 about buildings and fences, turning over of rocks and of pull- 

 ing off the bark of trees. Beating oak trees over an umbrella 

 yielded many good things. The Coccinellidae were particularly 

 in evidence. 



After having collected from all of the oaks I took to the 

 grain fields, where ledges cropped up here and there. Finally 

 I worked my way to the borders of the saline flats. A short 

 distance from the edge of a grain field, and within the marsh 

 boundaries, a small barren knoll with croppings of a ledge 

 attracted my attention. Heretofore it had never yielded any- 

 thing more than a few Bembidium indistincta and Thicanus 

 californicns. The surface of the ground is always crusted 

 over with a saline exudation or deposit ; this barren spot is 

 not much more than one hundred feet square, and not much 

 more than three feet above the general level. It is bounded 

 by the saline marsh plants mostly what I take to be Salic ornia. 

 About the ledge were three or four loose and flat rocks, which 

 measured about two and one-half feet in length and one and 

 one-half feet in width. As I looked about it occurred to me 



