104 Forty-ninth Report on the State Museum 



List. Beyond the studies of Mr. Cresson, to whom we owe the 

 description of more than three-fourths of the above number, very 

 little has been done in our country upon this interesting family. 

 The social members of it [Bombiis) have not proved attractive sub- 

 jects for systematic study, owing to difficulty of identifying the three 

 forms under which each species occurs, unless they are collected in their 

 nests, which, from the danger incurred, few care to undertake. The 

 State Collection has but feeble representation in this family, only 76 

 species being contained in it. A study of the genera of Bombiis 

 and Psithyrus, made by Mr. W. L. Bemis, of the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College, under the supervision of Professor C. H. 

 Fernald, afforded the opportunity of submitting the examples in those 

 genera for critical study and determination. Nearly all of the about 

 700 examples in the Collection had been taken in the Adirondack 

 Mountains. Nine species of Bombus and three of Psithynis (formerly 

 Apathiis) were identified among them — six species in their three forms, 

 three in male and female, and three in one form only, viz , Bombus 

 Ridmgsii in the female and Psithyrus celatus and P. citrinus in the 

 male. The species occurring the most abundandy were Bombus 

 vagans in 262 examples, B. terricola in 147 examples, and B. teniarius 

 in loi examples. The rarest apparently was B. Ridingsii Cress, 

 in only two examples. Psithyrus — generally believed to live parasiti- 

 cally in nests of Bombus — while regarded by some as the male of 

 species of Bombus — as compared in number with that genus, was as 

 one to thirty-seven. Species of Bombus not occurring in the collec- 

 tion but which might have been exepcted in it, were affinis, bimaculatus, 

 borealis, and consimilis. Examples of these would be acceptable con- 

 tributions to the Collection. 



Some work has been done m determination of and cataloguing the 

 Odonata (Dragon-flies) of the State. A list pubhshed by P. P. Cal- 

 vert, of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, an authority 

 in the Odonata, in March, 1895, gave 85 species as known to occur 



