KEPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 299 



in front of the latter, her head directed from it, and then with her front 

 feet she throws the dirt into her burrow, occasionally going into the lat- 

 ter apparently for the purpose of scratching the dirt into the farthest 

 end of it, soon to return and resume the filling-up process ; in this way 

 she continues until the burrow is filled up and not a trace of its existence 

 is to be seen. 



In digging her burrow the wasp frequently uses her strong jaws, but 

 in filling it up she uses her feet almost altogether, standing upon her 

 two hind pairs of feet and scratching with her front ones somewhat as 

 a dog would ; all of her movements are very rapid. 



I saw a single specimen of another species of wasp dragging a De- 

 vastating Locust to her burrow ; she dragged the locust into her burrow 

 in the same manner that the Priononyx airata did, as described above. 



I also saw a single specimen of the Sphcx rufiventris dragging a wing- 

 less cricket {Anabrus sp.) to her burrow in a similar manner. During 

 the fore part of July I saw several pairs of these ISphex wasps united 

 in coition in the dooryard of the Bnhach plantation, while many of them 

 were lying upon the ground dead ; these latter I judged were males 

 which had died after coition had taken i)lace. 



On the 20th of July I found three red mites attached to the under side 

 of the breast of a Trimerotropis sp., a Spineless-breasted Locust having 

 the hind wings bluish at the base. These mites were in shape like an 

 inverted tea-cup, and were doubtless the young Trombidium locustarum ; 

 but unfortunately they escaped before a careful examination of them 

 could be made, and I did not succeed in obtaining any additional speci- 

 mens. 



On the 6th of July a dipterous larva, about 9 millimeters long, issued 

 from an oval hole in the side of the thorax next the head of a Bisso- 

 steira spurcata which I had inclosed in my cj'anide bottle ; this larva 

 died before pupating, having been killed by the cyanide, as it was not 

 discovered by me until an hour or more had elapsed after I placed the 

 locust in the bottle. 



This was the only specimen of this parasite that I obtained, although 

 I dissected many hundred locusts in search of additional specimens, 

 but without meeting with success. 



In a paper on the North American Conopidw, which appeared in the 

 Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Natural Sciences, for the 

 month of March, 1885 (vol. vi, p. 389), Dr. S. W. Williston, quoting 

 from Brauer, states that Conops is sometimes x>arasitic upon Q^dipoda 

 (a genus of Spineless-breasted Locusts). The only species of Conops 

 that I have taken in the San Joaquin Valley is the Physoccphala ajjjinis, 

 Williston ; and the Dipterous larva mentioned above may have belonged 

 to this si)ecie8. 



REMEDIES. 



As soon as the locusts began to appear in destructive numbers upon 

 ili(.' Buhach plantation, the superintendent, Mr. G. E. Ladd, tried a great 

 many means of destroying them. 



Adjoining this plantation on the west is an alfalfa field that literally 

 swnrmed with locusts; many of them found their way to the adjac^'n't 

 trees upon the Buhach plantation, and to intercept them Mr. Ladd 

 placed a windrow of dry pyrethrum stems between this alfalfa field and 

 the nearest row of trees upon the plantation. In the evening many of 

 the locusts would crawl into this windrow for the purpose of spending 

 the night therein, and late at night the windrow was set on fire j in this 



