137 



NOTES FROM UTAH. 

 By the late Andrew Murray, F.L S. 



[The accompanying notes, of a few points of insect life 

 round Salt Lake City, are taken from one of the letters 

 written home by Mr. Andrew Murray during his Californian 

 expedition in 1873, and will probably be read with interest 

 by others, besides the friend and fellow-worker in His special 

 field of Economic Entomology to whom they were originally 

 sent, although merely slight observations (jotted down 

 without any view to publication) of such matters as caught 

 his attention in the intervals of business. The alteration of 

 the climate by irrigation, and the, apparently, consequent 

 attack of the sage-brush by gall insects, was a subject in 

 which he took much interest, from its possible economic 

 results eventually on the vast tracts useless, or almost 

 useless, from the presence of the Artemisia. Of these galls 

 he brought home many specimens, of which the different 

 kinds are now represented in the economic collection at 

 Bethnal Green,] 



Of insects one of the most interesting is the large, black, 

 slightly bronzy cricket, on which the Indians used to feed, 

 and which nearly destroyed the early crops of the first 

 settlers. 



The beetles are mainly of the Europeo-Asiat. American 

 type, very much like our own. I have three or four specimens 

 of a Carabus, like C. campestris. On the margins of the 

 streams plenty of Peryphus, Bembidiurn, and their con- 

 geners ; but there is one difference in the largest Bembidium, 

 With us they run with great swiftness in the hot sun; but 

 this species on the smallest provocation opens its wings like 

 a Ciciiidela, and flies off. It seems only to make a little 

 flight, but I have never been able to see one alight. The 

 Cicindelas in the warm days in the glens are in great 

 numbers, but fly oflf so quickly that I have only got one or 

 two : most of them are the common Eastern species, 

 C. repanda. A slight element of Californian species shows 

 itself: — a Cremaslocheilus, two or three Eleodes, &c. ; only 

 one Curculio ; two E later s ; and a fine burying beetle, like a 

 magnified A', vestigator. There are plenty of dead mules 

 and dead cattle, but they set fire to them here; and almost 

 every little patch of cow-dung in the pasture has also been 

 fired. 



