90 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March, 



PROF. G. C. DAVIS, who is well known to the entomological world, is 

 now located at Ogilby, California, where he is chemist to the American 

 Girl Gold Mining Company. He has not lost his interest in entomology 

 but has had little time for such studies lately. 



Heterochroa califomica. I learn from Miss C. Ellis that this butterfly 

 is common in the Sandia Mountains, N. M. This is worth recording, as 

 it extends its range about 200 miles northward in this region. Further 

 north, in the mountains about Las Vegas, I have never seen the least 

 sign of it. T. D. A. COCKERELL. . 



I HAVE taken last fall at Mount Arlington (N. J.), several specimens 01 a 

 Polistes, which were stylopized with males and females of Xenos rossi. 

 Have also taken there several Po/istes with the empty pupa cases of the 

 male Xenos. Have taken seven of the first described wasps alive with 

 me across the continent to California and have kept them several weeks, 

 feeding them on different kinds of fruit, hoping that the Xetios males will 

 hatch ; but the wasps died all (the last fully four months after the capture) 

 without yielding a single live Xeuos. I dissected the abdomen of one 

 of my prisoners and have taken out of the pupa case a fully developed 

 but dead male Xei/os, the latter evidently having died before its host. 

 Unfortunately this artificially-acquired parasite had its wings in the folded 

 state of the pupa, and I was unable to spread them, in spite of several 

 softening methods. Could you suggest me some way of getting the 

 wings in their proper shape? The beetles are otherwise perfect and 

 even dark colored, so that it looks to me almost as if they would have 

 been killed by the host or one of its friends before being able to leave 

 their breeding place. A. FENYES, Pasadena, Cala. 



Typhlopsylla octactenus Kol. In his " Preliminary Studies in Siphou- 

 aptera," published in the Canadian Entomologist in 1895 (Jan. Aug.), 

 Prof. C. F. Baker, speaking of the genus Typhlopsylla, says : ' The 

 above five species (referring to iiiiipectinata, octactenus, he.vacteau.^ 

 pentactenus and dictenus) of Typhlopsylla, are all bat fleas, and have 

 been found on a number of kinds of bats in various parts of Europe. 

 I regret to say that I have not been able to obtain any bat fleas from 

 this side of the water." 



Insomuch as Prof. Baker had at that time made quite extended collec- 

 tions of Siphonaptera it may be of interest to some to know that on 

 April 28, 1900, I secured four specimens of T. octatenns from bats taken 

 near Ithaca, N. Y. Two species were taken, Jfyofis snhn/titits (Say), the 

 little brown bat, and Vespertilio fuscus (Beauvois), the brown bat. As 

 they had come in contact with each other before the fleas were secumi, 

 the latter may have passed from one host to the other, so I am at a lo 

 to know to which to_assign the species. l\'sperti/io fit sens, it is inten --.t- 

 ing to note, is found in both the Old and New World. C. O. HOUGHTON, 

 Ithaca, N. Y. 



