296 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 4 



Mr. T. D. Urbahns, instructor in entomology at the Minnesota Agricultural 

 College, has resigned to take up an investigation of the alfalfa weevil for the Bureau 

 of Entomology, and will be located at Salt Lake City. 



The January issue of Agriculture, published monthly by the Association of Agri- 

 cultural Students of the University of Nebraska, is an entomological number which 

 will doubtless prove of interest to many of our readers, since it gives a summary 

 account of the development of the Department of Entomology, including a dis- 

 cussion of its present activities. 



Mr. D. L. Van Dine has left the employ of the Sugar Planters' Association at 

 San Juan, Porto Rico, and is now entomologist of the Estacion Experimental de 

 Azucar, Rio Piedras, Porto Rico, where corresponsdents should address him. 



The advance of the boll-weevil into Alabama, occurring during the fall of 1910, 

 has already exerted a strong influence in leading planters to adopt more improved 

 methods, not only in the culture of cotton, but with other crops as well. The press 

 of the state has shown a most commendable desire to help in the campaign of progress 

 and the leading papers are anxious to publish agricultural matter. 



The Alabama Legislature, now in session, has been sufficiently impressed to 

 appropriate $27,000 for 1911, and twice that amount for each of the succeeding 

 three years for the enlargement of the Experiment Station work. This is the first 

 direct appropriation that the state has made to the Experiment Station. With this 

 general awakening, and the open-minded attitude of the planters and business men, 

 Alabama stands some chance of suffering less from the advance of the boll-weevil 

 than have most other states into which it has spread. 



Miastor larvae. — -These remarkably interesting larvae reproduce by pedogenesis, 

 are available for laboratory work to a marked degree and must be widely distributed 

 as well as allied forms. Very little is known concerning American species, largely 

 because their habitat is one rarely explored by entomologists. They breed mostly 

 in decaying vegetable matter. We have been very successful in finding them under 

 partially decayed chestnut bark of stumps, fence rails and sleepers which have been 

 cut one or two years earlier. European species occur under the bark of a variety of 

 trees and even in sugar beet residue. These Dipterous maggots with diverging 

 antennae and a fuscous ocular spot in the first body segment, have a" flattened, tri- 

 angular head quite different from the strongly convex, usually fuscous head of the 

 Sciara larva? occurring in a similar environment. They have a length of from one- 

 twentieth to one-eighth of an inch and may be found in colonies containing a few 

 large, white larvae with numerous smaller, yellowish individuals, the latter being 

 more common at the present time. Early spring with its abundance of moist bark 

 appears to be the most favorable season for finding the larvae. The writer would 

 welcome the cooperation of entomologists and others in searching for these forms 

 in different parts of the country. He will be pleased to determine specimens found 

 under various conditions, make rearings therefrom if possible, and thus add to our. 

 knowledge of the subfamily Heteropezinae, a group which should be fairly abundant 

 in North America and one deserving careful study. E. P. Felt, Albany, N. Y. 



Mailed, April 17, 1911. 



