158 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [xxxii, '21 



REPORT UPON A COLLECTION OF COCCIDAE FROM LOWER CALIFORNIA. By 

 GORDON FLOYD FERRIS, Instructor in Entomology. Stanford University 

 Publications, University Series, Biological Sciences, Vol. I, No. 2, pp. 

 61-132, 52 text figs. 1921. As far as Mr. Ferris is able to determine, 

 not a single species of Coccidae, or scale insects, has heretofore been 

 recorded from the peninsula of Lower California, 800 miles in length. 

 In the summer of 1919, with the financial support of the California 

 Academy of Sciences, the Department of Entomology of Stanford Uni- 

 versity, and the United States Bureau of Entomology, he made an ex- 

 pedition to the southern parts of the peninsula to extend our knowl- 

 edge of these insects. His itinerary was from La Paz, on the gulf 

 coast, by riding animals and a pack train, to San Jose del Cabo, Cape San 

 Lucas, Todos Santos, on the western coast, and thence across the penin- 

 sula back to La Paz. In the present paper he records 79 species of Coc- 

 cidae from the Cape region of Lower California, of which 24 are iden- 

 tified as having been previously recorded from the southwestern United 

 States or northern Mexico, and 29 as new. Several new genera are 

 recognized. Mr. Ferris tells us that : 



"The affinities of the scale insect fauna of this region are most inti- 

 mately related with the fauna of southwestern United States and north- 

 western Mexico, which is quite in accord with the known facts con- 

 cerning the other groups that have been studied to any extent. What 

 connection, if any, there may be with the fauna of the tropical west 

 coast of Mexico, below Mazatlan, remains to be determined, for the 

 scale insects of the latter region are still almost entirely unknown. 



"In general the collector in this area cannot fail to be impressed by 

 the absence of conspicuous forms, especially in the Coccinae. A very 

 large proportion of the species are only to be found by the stripping 

 off of loose bark, the uprooting of such things as may be uprooted, or 

 the digging about the roots of those that may not. Practically all of 

 the soft scales are attended by ants of the genus Crcmatocjasicr and are 

 protected by shelters of a papery consistency built by the ants across 

 the cracks in which the scales are hidden, 'or even over individuals that 

 may otherwise be freely exposed upon the twigs. It is frequently only 

 by the presence of the ants that any indication is given of the presence 

 of the scales." 



To compare such slowly moving insects as the scales with those of 

 powerful flight is probably not very useful, but it may be of some inter- 

 est to point out that the collections of dragonflies, made by the expedi- 

 tions of the California Academy of Sciences between 1889 and 1894. 

 showed for the peninsula as a whole that about half the species won- 

 chiefly nearctic, or more widely distributed, the other half mainly neo- 

 tropical, the latter being still more strongly evident in the Cape region 

 (Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. 2 IV, 464-466). PHILIP P. CAI.VERT. 



