April, '11] townsend: record system 249 



A SIMPLE AND CONVENIENT SYSTEM OF KEEPING GENERAL 

 ENTOMOLOGICAL RECORDS 



By Charles H. T. Townsend, Piura, Peru 



The system described below was devised a year ago by the writer 

 on his arrival in Peru. It is especially adapted for use in a region 

 where little or no entomological work has previously been done, 

 and where much time must elapse before determinations of species 

 can be secured, but it is equally applicable to all general entomological 

 work. It has been in use for a year, and has so far fulfilled every 

 reasonable expectation. 



Note slips of the standard card-catalog size are used, but any size 

 desired can be substituted for these. Colored cards are used for 

 heads. Plant names are the chief heads, but certain others are included 

 as suit the needs of the work. A single species of plant may form a 

 head, or a single genus; and likewise a single species of insect, or a 

 group of insects. Insect heads are used only for certain groups or 

 categories that do not fall naturally under plant heads, or for certain 

 injurious species that are being exhaustively investigated and dealt 

 with economically. 



The heads are allotted numbers from 1 to 1,000, usually two num- 

 bers being reserved for each. In exceptional cases four numbers are 

 reserved for a head. Thus Heniichionaspis minor, which as a pest of 

 cotton, is being specially investigated in Peru, is allotted numbers 

 1, 2, 3, 4, head to include not only that species but all allied species 

 whose parasites promise well for use against it. Two numbers are 

 given to Dysdercus. Six numbers are reserved for the cotton square- 

 weevil and its allies, whose parasites may be used against it; since it 

 has recently developed that this newly discovered cotton weevil is the 

 cause of more damage to cotton in Peru than all other insects combined. 

 Two more numbers are given to all other cotton insects. The great 

 mass of heads are plant heads, but non-plant heads other than the 

 above are human and animal disease-transmitters and parasites, wasps, 

 bees, stored foods, silk, hides, drugs, collected microparasites and others 

 not connected with hosts, coccinellids, ants, termites, locusts, house- 

 hold insects, jiggers, ticks, museum pests, etc. These are all the non- 

 plant heads that have so far been needed, and these with the plant 

 heads have brought the numbers in a year to the 800-mark. 



When the first thousand numbers have been used for heads, the 

 same numbers can be used over again with the letters of the alphabet 

 prefixed; as Al to A1,000, Bl to B1,000, etc. This allows of an in- 

 definite number of heads. The heads and slips are arranged consecu- 



