INSECUTOR INSCITI;^ M^NSTRUUS 131 



A PSYCHOLOGICAL LOCALITY 



By HARRISON G. DYAR 



Some years ago I was asked by Sir George F. Hampson, of 

 the British Museum, for my opinion of the identity of a white 

 y, Memileuca which was being studied by Mr. J. H. Watson, of 

 Manchester, England. I considered it to be the same as 

 H. neumoegeni of Arizona. However, Mr. Watson was not 

 of my opinion and named the form as a species, H. burnsi, after 

 the collector. The principal difiference found consisted of the 

 traces of hyaline discal spots in H. neumoegeni which are absent 

 in H. burnsi. I did not consider this an important difiference ; 

 but when it was shown that the two forms apparently came 

 from dififerent fauna! regions I was obliged to yield the point. 

 Neumoegeni is from Arizona, in a sagebrush country ; burnsi 

 is described from Truckee, California, in the pine forest. In 

 Packard's Monograph (Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., xii, part 1, 124, 

 1914), Dr. McDunnough enlarges on the supposed dififerences 

 and gives the locality of burnsi as "Truckee Pass, Cal., 7,000 

 feet." 



So the names would have gone down in history, except that 

 recently I had the pleasure of a personal meeting with Mr. 

 Burns, the collector, in Reno, Nevada. Our talk naturally 

 drifted to his namesake, burnsi, and I inquired what was the 

 food-plant of this strange Hemileuca, so unexpectedly at home 

 in the boreal climate of Truckee. He replied: "It does not 

 occur in Truckee. I take the larvae right here in Reno on sage- 

 brush." Further conversation developed the fact that the 

 locality sent out by Mr. Burns had been "Truckee Basin," and 

 here was where geography and psychology began their work. 



The geography is this : The snows of the Sierras form on 

 the east of the divide, a great lake in California, known as Lake 

 Tahoe. It is at an altitude of 6,000 feet and has an outlet in 

 a considerable stream, known as the Truckee River. This 

 stream runs down into the arid plains of Nevada and ends, by 

 evaporation, in a sink called Pyramid Lake. The Southern 



