52 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March. 



kinds predominate. It is easy to capture large numbers of fine 

 specimen in a short time of Hymenoptera Coleoptera, Diptera 

 and other orders. Before these flowers are gone the palmetto 

 comes in. They are also very sweet and^ attractive to insects. 

 They last to the middle of June. 



For Diptera the best, places at the same season are on the large 

 patches of pitcher plants in marshy places. Large numbers can 

 be taken by sweeping ; I think they breed in the decaying mass 

 inside of the tube-like leaves. 



This is my first year in this locality. I find all kinds of plants 

 and vegetation entirely different from what they were in middle 

 Georgia. Even the common weeds are nearly all different ; this 

 would be a paradise for a botanist that had never been here before. 

 Wild flowers are not in such quantities as in California, but there 

 is such a variety of beautiful species. 



ANTS IN SOUTH GEORGIA. 



I have lived in different parts of the South, including middle 

 Georgia, Louisiana and Southern California. I thought I had 

 seen plenty of ants before, but I never have seen such numbers 

 as are on this farm. I do not know if they are as thick all over 

 this country as they are here, or not. This farm is set out to a 

 peach orchard, and it may be that as a good deal of the land is 

 never plowed on account of the trees, that the ants have more 

 chance to multiply. But during our dry seasons here in Spring 

 and Fall the surface of the earth is literally covered with them. 

 They seem to be nearly all of one species, a black ant about an 

 eighth of an inch or more in length. When mashed or touched 

 they emit a strong, unpleasant odor which is sickening to me ; 

 there is no keeping them out of the house. The floors are cov- 

 ered with them. As you sit in a chair and move your feet once 

 in a while you kill a few. This draws more, and you soon have 

 a black spot on the floor. You don't think about it until you 

 smell them ; under the rockers of a rocking-chair, you will kill 

 so many of an evening, that there will be two black marks just 

 the width and length of the rockers. They seem to be ravenous 

 all the time and will devour every living thing that comes in their 

 way. In walking along the roads I have noticed them attack 

 and kill insects large and small. A beetle or grasshopper will be 

 moving along when an ant will catch hold of a leg. The thing 



