42 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



NOTES ON THP: WINTER ( OLEOPTERA OF WESTERN AND 

 SOUTHERN FLORIDA, WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF 



NEW SPECIES. 



BY W. S. BLATCHLEY, 

 Indianapolis, Ind. 



During the -winter of 1918—1919 I collected from December 1 to February 

 11, and from March 6 to March 30, about Dunedin on the west coast of Florida.^ 

 In the interim, February 12 to March 5, I made a trip to Cape Sable and Key 

 West, stopping four days on the way at Lakeland. A number of interesting 

 and a few undescribed species of Coleoptera were taken during the season, and 

 of these, except the Rhynchophora which will be treated elsewhere, the present 

 article deals. 



Cape Sable, the extreme southern point of the mainland of Florida, is an 

 interesting place, but as yet a difficult one to reach. I went with a party of 

 land-seekers and tourists from Lakeland to Homeste.ad, via New Smyrna, 

 Palm Beach and Miami by automobile, thus passing clear across the State from 

 west to east and 250 m.iles down the. east coast, a route necessary to avoid bad 

 roads. From Homestead to Long Key, an island 30 miles southeast of Cape 

 Sable, we took a train on the East Coast Railway. At Long Key we were met 

 by a small boat of the Cape Sable Land Co., which makes a weekly trip- for mail 

 and supplies from the "Club House" of the Land Co. This club house is lo- 

 cated about three miles from the point of the cape proper. In fact, there are 

 three capes or points, the eastern and middle ones, about six miles apart, being 

 occupied to within 50 yards of the water's edge by cocoanut groves which con- 

 tain about 40,000 bearing trees. 



The country about Cape Sable differs much from other parts of Florida' 

 being for the most part a low, flat region devoid of pine, saw palmetto and sand' 

 the three dominant features of the usual south Florida landscape. The soil, 

 or rather the surface, is composed of comminuted limestone and, except along 

 the brackish inlets and sloughs, supports only a prairie-like vegetation of weeds 

 and grasses. The houses, few and widely scattered, are raised high above the 

 ground to avoid the tides which, during hurricanes or violent storms, often 

 cover the country for miles. There is no fresh water, rain water collected in 

 large square surface concrete cisterns furnishing the supply for the settlers. 

 Along the inlets and in the lower depressions are the so-called hammocks, com- 

 posed of a dense growth of subtropical shrubs and trees among which Spanish 

 bayonet, lall cacti and other thorn-bearing vegetation so abound that col- 

 lecting has to be done mostly along the margins. A single phrase from m\ 

 notebook, viz., "a few fair things and a million mosquitoes," was the average 

 record of each da\-'s collecting about the Cape at that season. Late in the 

 afternoon or on sultrN' days a "million" would l)c a vcvy low estimate ol the 

 mosquito population. Sex'cral timics they drove me out ol the hanmiocks 

 onto the open prairie where there was a little air stirring but poor collecting. 



The net result of my week's enforced stay was, on the whole, disappointing. 

 Of Coleoptera only Rhynchophora were found in any numbers, but of them a 



1. See Can. Ent., XLIX, 1917, 137. 

 February, 1920 



