206 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Juty, '22 



water level greatly lowered and in the entire Shoup woods 

 there were only four small pools remaining. The fine gravel 

 or sand ripples where females of linear is had been observed 

 ovipositing were now many of them entirely dry, in one case 

 at least to a distance of two inches below the surface. The 

 clay flat where charadraca was ovipositing seventeen days 

 before was dry and hard, and, like the sand and gravel bars, 

 far from any water. Mr. Settlemeyer told us that these small 

 streams usually begin to flow again in September. 



At 5.30 a. m. a female of llncaris was observed ovipositing 

 by tapping the abdomen in almost dry sand in a low stretch 

 in the creek bed. She scattered her eggs at intervals over an 

 area about four to six feet wide and twenty to thirty feet long. 

 She was captured and represented the day's catch, though half 

 an hour later a male was seen, but he was hurrying down the 

 dry creek bed. No other specimens were seen. The imaginal 

 life of the two species, llncaris and charadraca in northern 

 Indiana, is thus about thirty days or a little more, including 

 the last few days of June and practically the entire month of 

 July. Their period of ovipositing coincides with the time of 

 rapidly falling water level in the creek, thus exposing suc- 

 cessive clay banks and fine gravel bars on which the eggs are 

 placed while the surface is moist, thus insuring the distribution 

 of eggs over practically the entire creek bed. Oviposition was 

 observed only where the forest, a heavy second growth mostly 

 of white elm, lay on both creek banks. Somatochloras were 

 not observed where one bank was cleared and the other wooded. 



Associated with the two Somatochloras were a very few 

 Boycria vinosa, less than half a dozen being seen, and many 

 Caloptcry.v maculata. No other dragonflies were on the 

 wooded parts of the creek. Perhaps the most obvious differ- 

 ence to be noticed in collecting dragonflies in Indiana and in 

 the American tropics, is the great di (Terence in the amount of 

 odonate life on small woodland streams. On Davis Creek, for 

 example, there are only two dragonflies besides the two Soma- 

 tochloras, and these two are widely distributed, though with 

 pretty definite habitat preferences, while the two Somatochloras 

 alone seem to be confined entirely to the creek. I can call 10 



