March, I9II.] LeNG : NOTES ON COCCINELLID.E. 9 



seemed distinct. Johnson's figures on page 28 would seem sufficient 

 finally to prove the relationship of these supposed varieties of con- 

 vcrgcns, for scarcely a conceivable intergrade is missing. In connec- 

 tion with the large number of specimens he found, it is worth while 

 to mention that F. W. Nunemacher found a cliff 300 feet long at 

 Cactus Springs, Nevada, covered with Hippodaiiiia convergens. He 

 says the whole country was red with the congregated insects (Ent. 

 News, November, 1910). The study of these captures, perhaps, was 

 the foundation for the statement of Carl Fuchs at a meeting of the 

 Pacific Coast Entomological Society that the number of spots he 

 had observed in Hippodaiiiia convergens ranged from none to twenty- 

 two, with other variations (Ent. News, November, 1910, p. 432). 



To return to Mr. Johnson's discoveries, he found also a mass of 

 Hippodaiiiia spuria in which, out of 759 individuals, only 256 were 

 normal. On page 47 he figures the abnormal specimens which, as in 

 the case of convergens, include patterns previously regarded as dis- 

 tinct and the intergrades leading to them. The ideas which these 

 finds engendered were corroborated by a series of CoccincUa siib- 

 vcrsa in my collection obtained by Miss Florence Dennis at Dilley, 

 Oregon, of which many specimens are illustrated on page 59, and 

 by man}' similar though smaller series in the various collections Mr. 

 Johnson examined, and led him to attempt by artificial breeding to 

 show that the variation he had observed was determinate, i. c., a 

 progressive variation in some definite direction. While his experi- 

 ments in this direction do not seem to have been sufificiently con- 

 tinued to prove the case as completely as the corresponding experi- 

 ments of Tower with Leptinotarsiis, they throw a great light on the 

 variable maculation of Coccinellids. He found, for example, that 

 " an increase of pigment was obtained by exposing the prepupa and 

 pupa to the cold of a refrigerator (5° to 15° C), a cellar (15° to 

 17° C.) and the intermittent temperature of a room where the tem- 

 perature dropped during the winter months to 5° C. at night." At 

 the same time he observes that " subspecies of the mountains and 

 high latitudes " show " a larger percentage of the absence of pro- 

 notal dash," and by inference from other passages he might have 

 added that such subspecies (as he calls them) always have more 

 black markings. He found that breeding from an abnormal female 

 of CoccincUa p-notata resulted in a progeny in which the peculiarities 



