80 



BULLETIN 67, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



debris, these insects are eventually washed ashore by the current at 

 various points and the coleopterist should not miss this rare oppor- 

 tunity, but go out to the river bank at a time when the water is still 

 rising, or at least when it has attained its highest point. Among, 

 or on the washed up debris, a multitude of Coleoptera of various 

 families can be found, and the specimens can either be gathered up on 

 the spot or a quantity of the debris be put in sacks and taken home, 

 where it can be examined more thoroughly and with greater leisure 

 than out of doors. A day or so after the floods have receded the 

 washed up specimens will have dispersed and only a few will remain 

 in the debris for a longer period. Still more profitable than the 

 spring floods are the summer freshets, because a larger and more 

 diversified lot of Coleoptera is then brought down by the water. A 

 similar opportunity for collecting is offered near the seashore if 

 unusually high tides inundate the low marshes along the bayous and 

 inlets. 



Summer collecting. — During the latter part of spring and 

 throughout the whole summer, when the vegetation 

 is fully developed, every possible collecting method 

 can be carried on with success, so that the beginner 

 hardly knows what particular method to use. 

 There are stones to be turned over; old logs, 

 stumps, and hollow trees to be investigated ; newly 

 felled or wounded trees to be carefully inspected; 

 here a spot favorable for sifting claims attention; 

 promising meadows and low herbage in the woods 

 invite the use of the sweeping net ; living or dead 

 branches of all sorts of trees and shrubs to be 

 worked with the umbrella; the mud or gravel 

 banks of ponds, lakes, rivers, and creeks afford 

 excellent collecting places; the numerous aquatic beetles are to be 

 collected in the water itself; the dung beetles to be extracted from 

 their unsavory habitations; in the evening the electric and other 

 lights are to be visited, the lightning beetles chased on meadows and 

 in the woods, or the wingless but luminous females of some species of 

 this family to be looked for on the ground, and the trees and shrubs 

 are to be beaten after dark in search of May-beetles and other noc- 

 turnal leaf -feeding species which can not be obtained at daytime ; and, 

 finally, some of the rarest Scarabseidse and some other species fly only 

 late at night or again only before sunrise. 



In view of this embarrassing multitude of collecting opportunities 

 in a good locality, the beginner is apt to be at a loss what course to 

 pursue. Experience alone can teach here, and only an expert collector 

 is able to decide, at a glance at the locality before him, what collecting 

 method is likely to produce the best results, and his judgment will 

 rarely be at fault. 



Fia. 124. — A Ciirysome- 



LID BEETLE, OCTOTOMA 

 PLICATULA. 



