Oct., '03] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 269 



Members of the genus Hemerodromia and the closely allied 

 genera, JMatitipe-a and Neoplosta, are to me among the oddest 

 of the Empids. Most of them are small, fragile, almost trans- 

 lucent flies, with white legs and antennae. As they run upon 

 a window pane with the light behind them they seem mere 

 shadows, little ghosts, frail, elflike things. Though these 

 sometimes appear upon the windows, I find them oftener rest- 

 ing on leaves near the ground in dense, dark shrubbery, and 

 by reaching into these sheltered spots with my sweeping net I 

 take several species, scapularis, palloris, empiformis, and others 

 I do not yet recognize. When the golden-rod blossoms, in 

 late summer, it is visited by many Empids, Rhamphomyia imi- 

 bilicata, with milky white wings, the female having one black 

 spot upon each, is our most common species here about the 

 yellow, feathery flowers. 



I have captured full fifty species of this family here in the 

 mountains. But in South Florida my captures do not exceed 

 a half dozen. It might be different there in midsummer when, 

 of course, I am far away. On the ocean beach at Lake Worth, 

 a small whitish Empid is abundant, flying over and alighting 

 upon the white sand, its little body seeming so nearly of the 

 same tint that one can hardly discern it. Mr. Melander has 

 erected a new genus for this species, which has been also found 

 at Wood's Holl, Massachusetts and it is now Coloboncnra 

 inusitata. This fly I take during the whole winter. So my 

 Empid hunting becomes an all-the-year- round pursuit, one 

 full of interest, I assure you. 



OWING to an oversight, Mr. \V. D. Kearfott's name was incorrectly 

 spelled on the cover, title-page and in the preface of Prof. Smith's New 

 Check List of the Lepidoptera of Boreal America. A new title-page will 

 be supplied, and all purchasers are requested to make the proper correc- 

 tion on the cover and in the preface. 



WHY DO MOSQUITOES bite human beings? According to Dr. Santos 

 Fernandez, of Cuba, it is because the females cannot form their eggs 

 without sucking some warm blood. If they fail to get it they lay no 

 eggs. Ergo, keep out of the way of mosquitoes and there will be no 

 mosquitoes. Mobile Register. Apropos, I have bred ('itlc.r restnans in 

 the Black Mountains, N. C , from water putrified by dead animal matter. 

 The larva? did not infest the clear water near by. The species was 

 kindly identified for me by D. \V. Coquillett. WM. BEUTKNMULUER. 



