584 PROCEEDINOS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.52. 



making their way around the lake in a series of short beats, which if 

 plotted would show a series of loops overlapping, but each in advance 

 of the preceding with occasional side flights after passing females 

 and insect prey. Because of this habit of circling the edge of the 

 lake, which was more pronounced in the morning while the sexual 

 impulse was strong, I caught the majority of my specimens by 

 standing in one place and catching the individuals on the wing as 

 they passed. 



In catching the females, the males would pounce down on them as 

 they moved among the sedges from one oviposition to the next, or 

 would themselves quietly drop, from their swifter coursing, down 

 among the sedge stems and slowly work through the narrow channels 

 until they found some female ovipositing. She would be seized, and 

 the pair would dash away m a nuptial flight, which soon ended in a 

 long rest in copulation while hanging to a tree. Many pairs flew 

 about the lakes with the male holding the females' head, but not in 

 copulation. This was more common than usual in AesJina, remindmg 

 one of Celithemis or Anax Junius. The females oviposited below 

 water, as is usual among Aeshnas, most of the ovipositing bemg done 

 in Carex stems. The egg is illustrated in figure 382. 



Females were common through the open places in the timber far 

 from the lakes, where they were ranging for food, but while aroimd 

 the water their whole attention seemed to be concerned with oviposit- 

 ing, except when males took them away in copulation. 



Male. — The male of this species is easily distinguished from inter- 

 rufta interna by the shape of the superior appendages (see fig. 355). 



My field notes indicate that the '{Dale colors are blue with the lower 

 ends of the thoracic stripes paler but not distinctly yellow, while 

 the dried material shows a majority of the specimens with lower end 

 of thoracic stripes distinctly yellowish. (Fig. 353.) My impression is 

 that the thoracic stripes were always blue in the male. The thoracic 

 stripes varied remarkably from completely interrupted lateral 

 stripes, which occurred m four of the sixty males, though various 

 narrowly connected stripes of which there were about 12 resembling 

 lineata, to the common form shown by the majority with the anterior 

 stripe broad at the base and tapering to a pomt above, while the 

 posterior stripe was moderately wide throughout its length. The 

 figures 356-365 show these variations. In life the eyes were blue 

 above and brownish or grayish below, with a narrow blue and black 

 dash across the upper surface. The thorax was grayish brown, the 

 abdomen black. The wings of the males were always hyalme. 



Female. — I can not distinguish the female of nevadensis from 

 several undoubted females I have of interna. Both blue and yellow 

 females were taken on McKinney lakes. My field notes of July 28 

 give colors of 17 females taken that day as follows: One, all markings 

 yellow, except the blue stripes in the brown eyes, wings strongly 



