30 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Vo,. ix. 



the numerous indications of underground life. This particular locality 

 is peculiarly adapted to the requirements of burrowing insects and 

 every road, every opening in the woods and almost every sand field 

 showed little heaps of sand ; here, there and everywhere. There is 

 first of all from six to eighteen inches of hght drift sand, dry as can 

 be in summer and light enough to blow away on the surface ; but 

 moist a few inches down and very compact. Below this comes an 

 admixture of fine clay, often colored by iron to a rusty red, and below 

 this there is usually a layer of gravel or sand or both. Strata follow 

 each other in this way eight feet down and more, on the level, none 

 of them more than a foot or two thick and all easy digging except in 

 the gravel which is sometimes very hard and mixed with iron stone. 

 Bees, wasps, spiders and ants we saw disappearing into holes in the 

 ground and there ended our knowledge of them. Of course I wished 

 to know more and talked learnedly of what little the books said on 

 the subject. Mr. Brakeley listened patiently and finally proposed to 

 get plaster casts of the burrows as the easiest way of finding out the 

 truth. When I proved skeptical as to the feasibility of the plan he 

 tried it quietly after I left and succeeded. He is, therefore, entitled 

 to full credit for the method by which the information, here given, 

 was obtained. After many trials he found that a good quality of 

 plaster was essential to the best results, and I obtained dental plaster 

 for the purpose. This was mixed measure for measure with water, 

 i. e., one ounce measure of plaster was dumped into one ounce measure 

 of water, the mixture was rapidly stirred and poured while perfectly 

 liquid into the surface opening of the burrow to be investigated. The 

 water drained rapidly into the moist soil and the cast set rapidly, some 

 holes taking as much as eight ounces of liquid plaster. This was com- 

 paratively easy ; the wearisome task was digging out these casts which 

 went down way beyond the limits I had supposed possible. The first 

 work was done on burrows made by spiders, which were large and 

 easily filled ; but in 1898 almost the entire summer was put into work 

 with bees. 



Colletes compacta Cress. 



The determination of this species, which is one of the earliest of 

 its tribe, I owe to Mr. Wm. J. Fox. It is on the wing early in March 

 and its burrows were first noted by Mr. Brakeley on March 12th. At 

 that time groups of from 10 to 20 little mounds of yellow sand were 



