156 Journal New York Entomological Society. [^oi. xxvi. 



In Florida, during the winter months, I have found umbrella col- 

 lecting a most excellent method of securing beetles which at that 

 season live in or on dead branches, among bunches of dead leaves 

 and in the pendent masses of Spanish moss. Many kinds of Elate- 

 ridse, Tenebrionidse, and especially Anthribidse, Curculionidae and 

 Scolytidae have thus been taken which would have been gotten in no 

 other way. Although oak, bay, pine and numerous other kinds of 

 trees and shrubs are there dressed in their evergreen foliage through- 

 out the winter, yet beating this foliage at that season yields far fewer 

 species than does the dead and dry material above mentioned, for, 

 during the winter months, most of the beetles are not active and 

 feeding but dormant and hibernating beneath the most available 

 cover. 



On February ii, 1918, I spent the afternoon collecting in and 

 about the edges of Skinner's Hammock, a densely wooded wet tract 

 of several hundred acres located about one mile northeast of Dune- 

 din, Florida. I had with me both sweep-net and umbrella, using the 

 former on the numerous ferns and other low herbage growing beneath 

 the tall bay and oak trees of the hammock, as from this undergrowth 

 I have swept many rare species of Anthicidse and other families. 

 The beating among the tangled undergrowth of the hammock is 

 strenuous, for 



Overhead the wandering ivy and vine, 

 This way and that, in many a wild festoon 

 Run riot, 



and having had three hours or more of it I was ready to quit after 

 one more trial. I was then near the northwest corner of the ham- 

 mock and within fifty yards of where I had the winter before found 

 Monccdus guttatns Lee. in numbers on the tangled masses of the 

 slender twining milkweed, Metastelma scoparia Nutt. In making 

 the final beating I struck a number of living as well as numerous 

 dead branches, and also the edges of a large bunch of dead leaves 

 and fine twigs, whose base, about eight feet above the ground, was 

 supported by a tangle of the branches of an Anipelopsis, a vine of 

 the grape family. Finding the umbrella more than half full of 

 debris, through a sudden impulse, and for the first time in all my 

 collecting, I spread out a small rubber blanket which I carry with 

 me and as I searched the contents, threw the refuse onto the blanket 

 instead of on the ground. 



