122 DRAGONFLIES OF NORTH AMERICA 
confluent. Stripe 4 wanting below the spiracle, stripe 5 continuous but narrow, 
conjoined with 3 and 4 below. Legs black. Wings hyaline with black veins and 
brown stigma. The middorsal pale stripe of the abdomen becomes very narrow 
on segments 3 and 4, disappears on 5 to 9, and reappears as a diffuse pale round 
spot on 10. The extreme apical margin of 8 and 9 is pale above, and 8 has an 
isolated yellow spot on the slightly expanded lateral margin. 
specularis 

Kennedy (’17, p. 574) found this species on the wing from April to 
August—a rather long season of flight for a Gomphine. He studied its 
habits carefully in the coast streams of California. He says of it: 
As with most gomphines, the males of this species stay near the water while 
the females are seldom seen there. The males are usually found in the sunlit 
openings of the streams where they perch on stones, driftwood, or on the foliage 
of the surrounding alders. But while preferring the sunny spots they do not hesi- 
tate to hunt up and down stream through the shade. The four females I have 
taken were found along a road on the side of the gorge several hundred feet above 
the stream. They appear to resort to the stream only to oviposit. 
After having spent various days wading down mountain streams observing 
Octogomphus more often than catching them, I was rewarded on July 7 by seeing 
a female oviposit. She came volplaning down through an opening in the canopy 
of alders and, while going through evolutions involving several figures, 8’s and 
S’s, she touched the surface of the pool lightly with the tip of her abdomen at 
intervals of 2 to 6 feet. After 20 seconds of this she airily spiraled up and out 
into the sunshine, where she alighted on a bush on the hillside above the creek. 
Kennedy found the cast nymphal skins sticking to exposed roots of 
alder trees a foot or two above the surface of the pools in the streams. 
Judging by sizes of nymphs found together, he thinks that three years 
are required for development. He has published a careful description 
and figures of the nymph (l.c., p. 579). 
