132 TNSECUTOR INSClTl.qJ MENSTRUUS 



Pacific Railroad, going west, strikes the Truckee River just 

 above its end in Pyramid Lake and follows it through Reno 

 and into California to the town of Truckee, where it leaves the 

 river and plunges up the mountains to the summit. So much 

 for the geography. 



Now the psychology comes in. Mr. Burns should have given 

 the locality as "Reno, Nevada ;" but he evidently sought to im- 

 prove a little on that, as befitted the importance of his discov- 

 ery, and he invented the more general locality of "Truckee 

 Basin," meaning the basin of the Truckee River as it flows 

 through the sagebrush plains around Reno. Now "Truckee 

 Basin" cannot be found on any map, and no one ever heard of 

 the Truckee River ; but the town of Truckee, California, is 

 known to all as the place where you change cars to go to Lake 

 Tahoe and familiar to entomologists by the name of McGlas- 

 han and his early discoveries. So Truckee, California, it must 

 be, and the elevation was easily secured from the railroad folder 

 and added — 5,819 feet. But wait, here is something else. 

 There is another word on the label after "Truckee" that looks 

 like "Basin ;" but that must be an error. What should it be ? 

 Why "Pass," of course; "Truckee Pass." And now we must 

 increase the elevation by a thousand feet or so, say 7,000 feet 

 in round numbers, corresponding with the elevation of the 

 "Pass" above Donner Lake where the railroad goes through. 



So, there we have H. hurnsi, brought by a psychological 

 process from the sagebrush plains of Reno, at 4,500 feet, to 

 the summit of the Sierras at the old pass above Truckee where 

 the Donner pioneers met such a tragic fate half a century or 

 more ago among the inhospitable, pine-clad slopes of the great 

 Sierras, and all this done without the knowledge of the insects 

 in question. The poor Hemileucas never could live up there. 



To return to prose. The locality of H. humsi should be 

 Reno, Nevada, and it should be classed as not more than a 

 variety of H. neumoegeni, inhabiting the same faunal region. 



