OF WASHINGTON, VOLUME XVII, 1915 123 



somewhere in central West Virginia and I think the phenomenon 

 is an annual occurrence here. A friend of mine at Gaston, W. Va., 

 has informed me that a few years ago an army of the myripods 

 invaded and took up their quarters in his strawberry field. They 

 were present at the time the fruit was ripening and were so numer- 

 ous that it was practically impossible for him to gather his crop 

 of fruit. The creatures collected around and fed on the over- 

 ripe fruit. I heard of another instance where an army covered 

 an old boardwalk and fed on the damp and decaying surface of 

 the boards until the discolored portion was all scraped away 

 so that the boards looked like they had been newly made." 1 



FRAGMENTARY NOTES ON THE LIFE-HISTORY OF THE 

 MYRIOPOD, SPIROBOLUS MARGINATUS. 



BY H. S. BARBER, Bureau of Entomology. 



The large common julid, Spirobolus marginatus, as determined 

 by Dr. O. F. Cook, is the principal prey of the giant glow-worm 

 Phengodes laticollis Lee., in the vicinity of Washington, D. C., 

 and in breeding experiments with this beetle several thousand 

 individuals of the myriopod have been used as food. In securing 

 this food supply for the beetle larvae some observations have been 

 made which it may be well to put in available form. Mr. Coville 

 has cited this species (Journ. Wash. Acad. Sci. vol. 3, pp. 81-82 

 and Ann. Rep. Smithsonian, 1913, p. 337.) as one of the important 

 factors in the reduction of the leaf litter into humus, and has 

 alluded to its abundance in restricted localities along the banks 

 of the Potomac River near Plummer's Island where these observa- 

 tions have been made. 



Throughout the warmer part of the summer the species is to be 

 found above ground in the dark woods during daytime, but its 

 chief habit is to hide beneath the leaves or under bark of dead logs, 

 except during the night when it is crawling about, eating the 

 lichens from the rocks and the weathered surfaces from the logs 

 or the bark of the trees. Most of its food consists of decaying 

 leaves or rotting wood. Specimens of all sizes from less than 

 one inch to about three inches in length can be found under these 

 conditions from early May until late fall, but there are fluc- 

 tuations in the numbers in which they appear, which the writer 

 does not understand. 



1 More recently (July 3, 1915) II. A. Gossard ha.s reported a similar abund- 

 ance at McArthur, Ohio, where a species (possibly F '. coriacea Koch, 

 Banks' determination) was extremely numerous, covering the ground in 

 places and causing much annoyance by getting into wells and springs, but 

 otherwise apparently not doing much damage. 



