Vol. X\'i| I -TOMOLOGICAL NEWS 365 



RECENT GIFTS AND ACCESSIONS TO THE ENTOMOLOGICAL DKI'ARTMKNT 

 AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY. From the report of the Hope Professor of 

 Zoology, E. B. Poulton, for 1909, we learn that Dr. G. B. Longstaff has 

 given an endowment of 2400 for an assistantship or other aid to the 

 department. The remaining collections other than the Coleoptera, with 

 over 3,000 types, acquired by the British Museum of Natural History 

 in 1893, and zoological library of the late F. P. Pascoe, the distinguished 

 authority on certain groups of Coleoptera have been presented by his 

 daughter, Miss Pascoe. Mr. W. Walmesley White, of Teneriffe, gave 

 a very fine collection of Lepidoptera of that island, a welcome addition, 

 for the study of island faunas, to the Wollaston collections of Coleop- 

 tera of Madeira and the Canary Islands. Another gift consists of be- 

 tween 5000 and 6000 specimens of Acidalia viryitlaria, bred in a Mende- 

 lian experiment by Messrs. L. B. Prout and A. Bacot, in ten genera- 

 tions from a cross between two geographical races of the moths . 



PLANT-DWELLING ODONATE LARVAE. In the NEWS for June last, 

 page 264. is recorded the breeding of Mccistogaster niodcstus Selys 

 from a larva found in the water among the leaf bases of a bromeliad 

 in Costa Rica. That I was not the first to breed this species is shown 

 by the following. While in Cartago, Costa Rica, I received a letter 

 from Mr. Frederick Knab, of the United States National Museum, 

 dated Washington, August 5, 1909, in which he stated: "In the course 

 of my mosquito work in the tropics I investigated the water between 

 the leaves of the epiphyte Bromeliaceae and found that, besides mos- 

 quito larvae, there was a rich insect fauna. The winter of 1907-08 

 was spent at Cordoba, Mexico, and there I found that nearly every 

 bromeliid investigated contained dragonfly larvae. I was not pre- 

 pared to rear Odonata, but I finally did succeed in breeding out a 

 couple of rather large, unfortunately crippled, Agrionids. I intended 

 sending these to you when your announcement appeared that you 

 would receive no more material. Since then these specimens have 

 been destroyed' by Dermestidae." Since my return to the United 

 States, Mr. Knab has written me under date of August 18, 1910: 

 "Herewith I am sending you, by Mr. Viereck, the fragments of the 

 two dragonflies which I bred from arboreal bromeliids. I am afraid 

 you can do but little with them, there is so little left, but if you can 

 make them out T would be glad to hear from you." There is no doubt 

 that the fragments of the images sent by Mr. Knab belong to the same 

 species which I reared in Costa Rica, Mecistogaster modestus Selys, 

 and they transformed in the same month, April (but of 1908), as mine 

 did. Mr. Knab's letter of August 5, 1909, reached me in Costa Rica 

 before I had found any bromeliadicolous Odonata, although I had 



