1399] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEV.'S. s."i 



untouched except for the marks of Mr. W. are where he has 

 subseqently cut into them, in the vain search for live beetles. I 

 would almost suspect that they had become extinct here if it were 

 not for my discovery of a dead specimen, which from its posi- 

 tion between leaves still attached to the tree, could not have 

 been there much over a year and probably not many months. 



Several logs, which Mr. W. has laid open to the heart, gave 

 me an excellent chance of examining the old borings of the 

 beetle, and I found some dead larvae and always, in each gal- 

 lery examined, the pair of great jaws and the clypeus of the 

 larva packed in the sawdust at the bottom of what was the 

 pupa cell. 



I think, from my own observations and the evidently fruit- 

 less visits of Mr. Wright, that colonies of the beetle are rare 

 and very hard to find. This is probably its northern limit, 

 but in Baja California it may possibly be more abundant. 



PALM SPRINGS, CALA., February 27, 1897. 



I have searched far and wide for a living brood of Dinapnt<\ 

 as I have made an arrangement with Dr. Murray to secure the 

 beetles later on in the season in case I find a colony of the 

 larvae. With this object I explored Andreas canon on the 

 16th but did not go far enough and found only a few vigorous 

 young trees. On the 2th I again visitel this canon, but 

 did not reach the best part of it, being stopped by precipitous 

 side walls and by the stream, which is now swollen to a dan- 

 gerous torrent by heavy snows in the San Jacinto Mts. The 

 bottom of these small canons is always nearly impassable by 

 reason of huge bowlders and tangles of gr.ips vines, mesquite 

 cat's claw aoacias together with, in the case of Andreas canon, 

 thickets of quite large Alder trees, <'.ttomv.ods. Sycamores 

 and piles of dead brush from the same, through which there 

 is no forcing a passage. It is nesessary to make one's way 

 along the stesp slopes, often 200 feet above the valley, and 

 often to cross over and ascend the other wall in order to pass 

 some vertical face of rocks. All this takes time and strength. 

 I found however in Andreas canon a thorax of IH>i<ij>titf\ in a 

 pile of stream drift, showing that the beetle occurs there. I 

 finally left the m:iin cnuon and crawled over a divide into a 

 still smaller valley, also very difficult, but within halt a mile I 



