222 



The ant-lions made their obconic pits wherever they could se- 

 cure protection from rain, and waited at the bottom for an 

 unwary insect to walk into the trap. A tiny surface-burrow 

 in open sand, like that of a mole, was made by a small carabid 

 larva. The most curious work seen, was that of a small active 

 microlepidopterous larva, which webs together a tube of sand, 

 usually beginning at the base of a plant, and extending it long- 

 distances (two or three feet), up to the tops of the stems. We 

 have found these web tubes on Onagra and several other herba- 

 ceous plants. The adult was reared by Mr. J. J. Davis, and named 

 by the Bureau of Entomology Olethreutes dimidiana. Discrep- 

 ancies in the biology of that species and ours lead us to think 

 that an error has crept in somewhere. The web closely re- 

 sembles that of Prionapteryx nebulifera, described and figured 

 by Daecke ('05), which he found on huckleberry and sand myr- 

 tle growing on white sand in New Jersey; but Mr. Daecke has 

 seen our larva, and says it is not the same as his. 



Turning now to the tufted and moderately dense vegetation 

 of the neighboring areas of open waste land, too sandy for cul- 

 tivation or even for pasturage (PL XVIII., Fig. 1), there is 

 found an apparently inexhaustible variety of insect life. Grass- 

 hoppers swarm everywhere here. Melanoplus angustipenn is is 

 as numerous here as M. femur-rubrum on the prairie pastures. 

 Ageneottetix scudderi, Psinidia, and Trachyrhachis, as well as the 

 more familiar Dissosteira axid Hippiscus rugosus, are seen in fall, 

 and Hippiscus phcenicopterus and H. haldemanii in June. About 

 the Devil's Neck, Amphitornus hi color, a species of the Great 

 Plains, was now and then taken in such ground. In short 

 growths of coarse grass at the Moline Sand Hill were large 

 numbers of Orphulella speciosa. Upon the vegetation of the 

 waste areas mentioned were (Ecantkus 4-punctatus, Bacunculus 

 blatchleyi, and Conocephalus robustus, — the latter, head down, 

 simulating a grass leaf,— also Campylacantha, Neoft if/ fossa sulci- 

 frons, and a host of others. The Campylacantha was not con- 

 fined here to Ambrosia bidentata, upon which we uniformly 

 found it in southern Illinois. Here ant-lion adults fluttered 



