hungerford: aquatic hemiptera. 23 



The area contains a pool in a springy pasture meadow, and 

 Winterberry pool, a shallow bit of water overgrown with 

 clumps of winterberry bush and encroached upon by procum- 

 bent moss-covered masses of the fallen trees of former days. 

 This water in midsummer was solidly overgrown by duck- 

 weed, which made satisfactory collecting difficult Aside from 

 a few Belostomatids this was not good collecting. 



To the west of this pool are two others, nearly circular in 

 outline, and occupying depressions doubtless made by tardy 

 ice blocks, as the glaciers left the land. These are in a wooded 

 tract and their bottoms are deeply strewn with leaves. They 

 were good collecting for water bugs in early spring, but with 

 the advancing season they were abandoned by the bugs for 

 more favorable breeding places. 



Occasional trips were made to Dwyers ponds and a splendid 

 pool on Six Mile Creek, but with less of the regularity followed 

 in surveying the others. 



TWO POOLS AND TWO SEASONS. 



Attempts have been made to follow very closely the ad- 

 vancements of the season in nature. To do this successfully 

 certain pools have been selected and surveys recorded at fre- 

 quent intervals. From the field notes in this connection one 

 is impressed by the varying fortunes of the life in a pool 

 during the course of the season. Some of the notes taken in 

 connection with two studies are here given because they show 

 the history of two pool types, one a temporary Kansas pool 

 and the other a permanent body of water in New York state. 



A Temporary Pool. 



The pool described above as the Cattail pool was visited 

 regularly from early March until July 28, 1916, when all the 

 water had disappeared. This pool was visited November 20, 

 1915, at which time there was no water in the pool and little 

 of interest found save that the cattails were covered with 

 large black plant lice and their orange-colored eggs. A few 

 large spiders were hiding beneath the leaf sheaths of the 

 cattail. No water bugs were found, though the debris was not 

 sifted. In the Smith pond near-by, adult Notonectids, Corix- 

 ids and Belostomids were taken in numbers. 



The melting of the snows during the winter supplied the 

 basin of the Cattail pool with water again, and the first warm 



