1 895-1 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 277 



and insects were fairly abundant. But the afternoon and evening 

 were dark and wet, and the next day it rained ceaselessly. But 

 in the bright hours of our first collecting day, botanists and en- 

 tomologists had taken specimens enough to keep each one busy 

 through most of the cloudy weather. We worked in our rooms, 

 leaving doors open and exchanging ideas, comparing notes and 

 boasting mutually of our respective captures. Many times during 

 that day the botanists came to my table where I was pinning, 

 stretching or mounting my insects, bringing small contributions 

 found among their alpine plants. I seem still to see the judge as 

 he ran in upon one occasion, his face beaming, his thumb and 

 forefinger pressed tightly together and held out towards me. 

 " Where shall I put him?" he cried, "beautiful specimen, smooth 

 and shining." I quickly produced a cyanide bottle, and over 

 its open mouth he unclosed his fingers; alas! there was nothing 

 there; the very smoothness and shine of which its captor spoke 

 so exultantly had helped it to freedom, and it had slipped away 

 forever. But this loss was quite forgotten when, a few minutes 

 later, the same botanist brought a fine specimen of Notiophilns 

 sibiricus which had run across his drying papers out of some 

 mosses. The sphagnostic contributed several good things, 

 among them that tiny and rare little Coccinellid, Hyperaspis 

 higubris, and two or three small Staphylinidae. In the material 

 taken the day before I found some very good things. There 

 were several specimens of a pretty little weevil, Anthonomus 

 xanthocnemis Dietz, Mordella serval. Scymnus puncticollis and 

 Corphyra cyanipennis, all new to my Mt. Washington list. There 

 were also some interesting Ichneumonidae, and a few good Dip- 

 tera. On the afternoon of the 6th two more botanists joined our 

 ranks, both old acquaintances. How the old house rang that 

 evening with the sound of strange, polysyllabic words, excited 

 talk filled with mysterious phrases, cabalistic and incomprehen- 

 sible to all but the favored few. 



The next day was alternately fair and foggy; an hour of sun- 

 shine, then thick clouds, fog, and an occasional drizzle of rain. 

 But we found many specimens both of plants and insects. In 

 the intervals of sunshine flies, bees and small beetles gathered on 

 the arcnaria, potentilla and earliest golden-rod, and the air seemed 

 alive with tiny Diptera and Hymenoptera. The smaller para 

 siticn were very abundant, Chalcids, Braconidae and Proctotru- 



