4 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



All of this leads me call attention to a possible means of in- 

 troduction and diffusion of insects imported from Europe, not 

 into the United States direct, but into Mexico and Central 

 America, possibly also into northern South America, at the 

 time of or soon after the Spanish conquests. It is well known 

 that the Catholic priests as they pushed their way outward 

 among the natives established not only their churches among 

 the aborigines, but also the fruits, vegetables, and grains of 

 their native country. It appears to me that we are now get- 

 ting the first intimation of an early introduction of destructive 

 insects, either among these imported grains or plants them- 

 selves, or else in the material with which these were packed 

 for their long voyage across the Atlantic. Possibly the re- 

 cent introduction and spread of the alfalfa weevil {Phytono- 

 mus mnrinns} so far inland as about Salt Lake, Utah, may 

 offer an lliustration of what might have occurred in the earlier 

 days following the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the country 

 to the southward. 



Within the last year or two we have found insects in the 

 grain fields of the Indians in southern New Mexico and Ari- 

 zona, especially the latter, where these grains have been 

 grown for hundreds of 3^ears, but surrounded by a desert 

 country over which it would be impossible for these insects, 

 unaided, to make their way. Only last year (June, 1909) 

 Mr. C. N. Ainslie, on the Pima Indian Reservation at Saca- 

 ton, Arizona, discovered a gall fly whose larva attacks the 

 seed pods of alfalfa and which can only be separated from 

 Asphondylia miki Wacht., described as attacking alfalfa in 

 Europe, by the shape of the galled pods. 



The list of the species that might have been brought over 

 and established in southern Mexico and Central and northern 

 South America is not large, but the present indications are 

 that as we become more intimately acquainted with the insect 

 fauna of the country west of the one hundredth meridan, we 

 shall find more foreign species, that, like those given in illus- 

 tration, offer no possible explanation of their existence there 

 on the score of having been imported into and spread inland 

 from the seaports of the United States. 



A PREOCCUPIED NAME IN WASPS. 



Didineis vierecki, new name . 



Didineis crassicornis Viereck, Tr. Am. Ent. Soc., vol. 32, 1906; 

 p. 204; non Didineis crassicornis Handlirsch, Sitzber. Akad. 



Wiss. Wien., vol. 46, 1887, p. 267. 



S. A. ROHWER. 



