AQUATIC INSECTS IN NEW YORK STATE 339* 



monograph, Simuliar (1824), Westwood's The Water Cre^s- 

 Fly (1848) and Heeger's 8. columhascJiense (1848). More recently 

 there appeared in proceedings of the Royal Society of Copen- 

 hagen (1886) a very useful paper by Fr. Meinert on ''De eucephale- 

 Myggelarver," of which six or seven pages are devoted to Simu- 

 lium, besides some very good figures. On the early stages of 

 American species, Riley, in the report of the United States en- 

 tomologist for 1884, p. 342-43, writes as follows : 



The early stages of several of the American species have been- 

 studied. In the American Entomologist [June 1870, 2:227] un- 

 der the heading, " The Death Web of a Young Trout " we de- 

 scribed the larva and pupa with figures of a species afterward 

 described by us as Simulium piscicidium [ibid, p. 367] . 

 These larvae were said by Seth Green to live attached to stones 

 in swift running water and to spin a silken thread in which, 

 young fish became entangled and killed. This statement created 

 much excitement among fish culturists at the time, and really 

 seemed very plausible. It was contradicted, however, by Sara 

 J. McBride, of Mumford N. Y., in an article published in the- 

 same volume [p.365-67], and also by Fred Mather of Honeoye 

 Falls N. Y., in private correspondence with us. Mrs McBride 

 found that the perfect flies issued about April 1, and June 1 

 thereafter the larvae were found in the streams in great num- 

 bers — ^as a general rule attached to water plants 3 or 4 inches- 

 below the surface of the water. Some were also attached to 

 stones at the bottom. The majority were fastened to green de- 

 caying water cress, and these were green in color, while others 

 which held to dead forest leaves of the previous year's growth,, 

 which had become entangled in the cres8,were brown. From this- 

 fact she justly argued that they fed on decaying vegetable mat- 

 ter. There was a succession of generations or broods through- 

 out the season, the development of a single brood occupying 

 about two months. The flies issuing in midsummer were smal- 

 ler than those developed in the spring and fall, although no dif- 

 ference in the size of larvae and pupae was perceptible. In 

 the same volume (229-30), Osten Sacken gives an account of an 

 undetermined species found attached to the roots and plants in 

 swift running streams in the vicinity of Washington. This ar- 

 ticle contains also an able review of previous writings on the 

 subject and is illustrated with figures taken from Verdat. In- 

 the American Entomologist [Aug. 1880, 3:191-93] Dr W. S. Bar- 

 nard described the stages, with figures of the eggs, of a common 

 species in the mountain streams around Ithaca N. Y. The eggs 



