152 ENTOMOLOGICAL NWS [April, 'l2 



The Known Indiana Somatochloras (Odonata.)- 



By E. B. WILLIAMSON, Bluffton, Indiana. 



In the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia for 1839, Thomas Say, in a paper read July 12, 

 1836, says of his new Libellula tenebrosa, "Inhabits Indiana." 

 Twenty-five years had elapsed since the Battle of Tippe- 

 canoe; and just twenty-five years more were to pass when 

 the cicadas and the darters with their capital W's announced 

 another war. And forty years after the beginning of that 

 war passed before a Somatochlora was again recorded for 

 Indiana. Well did Professor Needham include one Somato- 

 chlora in his discussion when he wrote of "Two Elusive Drag- 

 onflies." (Ent. News, 1905). 



In these sixty-five years between the captures of Soma- 

 tochloras in Indiana, the State had passed from a wilder- 

 ness to cultivated lands. Where the farmer as a boy caught 

 cat-fish and snapping turtles, he plowed corn as a man. The 

 smaller streams became tile ditches; the primitive forests, 

 fields and pastures. What changes took place in the original 

 plant and animal inhabitants of the State are known very 

 meagerly even for the most conspicuous forms. The pass- 

 ing of the obscurer has not left a trace. Of the wild turkey 

 and the deer we know something, but who has concerned 

 himself with the extinction of an orchid or the loss of a 

 dragonfly? That these questions already difficult are to be 

 answered in the future while data are yet obtainable is scarce- 

 ly to be hoped. Philanthropy is concerning itself in pure 

 science mainly in attacking problems whose solutions may 

 be as ready for the student thirty generations hence as at 

 the present time. Unfortunately no one will find an oppor- 

 tunity to collect native orchids or Somatochloras in Wells 

 County, Indiana, a thousand years from now. The humble 

 apology of the writer of local lists to the student of the 

 anatomy of the cat is not in good taste. 



Thomas Say, then, in 1836, recorded L. (Somatochlora} 

 tenebrosa for Indiana. On June 4, 1901, Mr. Chas. C. Beam 



