160 Journal New York Entomological Society, t^'o'- xxiv, 



Miss C. Sidney Spencer, of 437 W. sgth St., College P. & S., proposed 

 for membership at the last meeting, was duly elected. 



Dr. Lutz, delegate to the Pan-American Congress, reported that he had 

 attended its meetings. 



Mr. Davis, delegate to the New York Academy of Sciences, reported the 

 contemplated centennial celebration early in 1917, of the anniversary of the 

 founding of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, in 1817. 



Mr. Davis presented some notes by Mr. Woodruff and himself on local 

 Malachiidas, found on Staten Island and Long Island. 



Prof. Brues spoke of his trip to the West Coast of South America in 1912 

 with the Strong Expedition from the Harvard Medical School, and especially 

 of the studies by this party of the relations between insects and some of the 

 diseases prevalent in the regions visited. On the west coast of South America 

 yellow fever is confined to parts of the Colombian coast and the lowlands of 

 Ecuador, where there is a dense forest growth, with heavy rainfall and hot 

 climate, Guayaquil being a great hot-bed of disease, especially prevalent during 

 the rainy season. Among the natives the disease occurs almost entirely with 

 young persons, but visitors, even natives from the nearby mountains, are 

 susceptible at any age. Owing to the many changes in the government of 

 Ecuador, little has been done to stamp out the disease, although it has been 

 entirely eliminated at the Isthmus. The boats anchor at Guayaquil, 400 meters 

 from shore, and after the four days' journey to Panama, are quarantined two 

 days, and this period of six days covers the period of incubation, thus pre- 

 venting disease from spreading north. The mosquito carrying yellow fever 

 in this territory is Stegomyia pallipes. 



At Buena Ventura, on the west coast of Colombia, the common mosquito, 

 Culex fatigans {quinquefasciata?) is a carrier of the elephantiasis and 

 phaleriasis prevalent there, and also at Panama. 



In the deep canyons, including the Lima River, near Lima, the two 

 diseases known as verruga (meaning await) and arroya fever, are quite com- 

 mon, occurring simultaneously in many cases and the latter having a very 

 high death rate (about 80 per cent.). 



Townsend believed the two diseases identical and found Phlebotomys 

 to be the carrier. 



The bacteriological investigations of the Strong Expedition, however, lead 

 to the belief that the two things are separate diseases, — verruga, caused by an 

 ultra-microscopic, presumably protozoan organism, and probably carried by a 

 species of tick (like the somewhat similar Texas-fever and Rocky mountain 

 fever diseases) and arroya-fever, caused by a small bacterian and carried by 

 Phlebotomys. 



These diseases are always contracted at night and at an altitude above 

 3,000 feet. 



Prof. Brues spoke also of great abundance of insects near Guayaquil at 

 electric lights, including a huge Belostoma, large water-beetles and Katydids. 



In canyons further south in arid regions, along the rivers where only 



