96 The Mountaineer 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES 
Eprrep BY GERTRUDE STREATOR 
For several years various members of the Mountaineers have col- 
lected insects for Prof. O. B. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of the Uni- 
versity of Washington. This is splendid work for the club members 
and Professor Johnson's appreciation is expressed in the following 
letter received this fall: 
“To the members of The Mountaineers. 
I am writing this to express my thanks for the kindly interest 
taken by the members of your club in collecting insects to be sent 
to me. These arrived in due time in good condition. Many of them 
were especially desirable and two or three were new. Coleoptimists 
are fortunate in having the services of the Mountaineers, as they reach 
unusual altitudes, and many of the problems of distribution, etc., have 
to do with what is called the glacial edge or ice pack, those ravellings 
of the old glacial era that are left on the perpetually snow-capped 
mountains. Few of us “beetle enthusiasts” have facilities for going 
to those places that your club is organized for. So I repeat it is fortu- 
nate to have such an ally. 
The group of beetles that is just now holding interest is the Coenus 
Nebria. Of the twenty-seven species found in the United States, fifteen 
of them occur in Washington and five of them were described as new 
in the last five years. There are undoubtedly others yet to be “dis- 
covered” in the peaks to the north of Glacier Peak and the mountains 
north of Spokane. 
One of our most exciting surprises came in the collection made on 
the Glacier Peak trip. Three examples of Pterostichus were decidedly 
new and so were submitted to Dr. Van Dyke of San Francisco, who 
says in part, ‘The species of Pterostichus sent is one that has long 
been misunderstood and has many pages written about what it was and 
what it was not. I was about convinced that it was a new species 
when suddenly a glimmer of light appeared. As a result I succeeded 
in definitely placing it. In other words your specimens are the long- 
lost, the long-overlooked, unrecognized and misunderstood Pterostichus 
brunnens. It will now be restored to the check list. 
This is but a hint of what may be done for this one branch of 
science. I had expected to send a list of species collected on the three 
trips, 1910, 1911, 1912, but it just strikes me that a bare list of the 
names will not appeal very strongly to a novice, and so I have resolved 
