184 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [XXXI, '2O 



of his party were forced to subsist for two weeks on lizards 

 and prickly pears. 



In the winter of 1868-69 ne returned to Virginia City for 

 the U. S. Geological Survey to make a study of the famous 

 Comstock lode. His celebrated maps of this lode are to be 

 found in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. But, with all his 

 pressure of business, his interest in entomology never flagged, 

 and many new and interesting species resulted from his 

 Nevada stay. 



Returning to San Francisco, he spent the next few years in 

 surveying, in 1870 becoming City Surveyor of San Francisco, 

 Near Fresno, he sank the first artesian well in California, 

 reaching a depth of 500 feet. He also put in the headgate 

 of the first irrigation ditch in the state, this near Kingsbury. 



In 1874, Mr. Stretch paid a visit to his old home in England 

 but returned to California in the following year, spending 

 the next two years at Havilah, in Kern County. Here the 

 dainty Philotes speciosa was discovered and named by Henry 

 Edwards, as were a number of other butterflies taken at 

 Havilah. In 1888 he removed to Seattle, Washington, and 

 from there mining engagements took him to nearly every 

 state in the west, as well as to British Columbia. He laid 

 out West Seattle, was chief engineer of the Seattle and South- 

 ern Railroad, and also, in later years, spent some time at 

 Skaguay, Alaska, as engineer for the White Pass and Yukon 

 Railroad. 



In 1885 his wife, whom he had married at Virginia City, 

 passed away and shortly after Mr. Stretch donated his 

 entomological library, rich in valuable works, to the Me- 

 chanic's Institute in San Francisco. His magnificent col- 

 lection, replete with many types and rarities, and numbering 

 about thirteen thousand specimens, he gave to the Univer- 

 sity of California, at Berkeley, California. 



Through all these busy years, Mr. Stretch kept up a world- 

 wide correspondence with entomologists. He was elected 

 a member of the California Academy of Sciences and the 

 Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. A constant 

 contributor on entomological subjects, his many papers are 



