46 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
coniferous forest area and the central deciduous hardwood 
forest area. The immediate region of the lake where most of 
our collecting was done, is covered with glacial deposits and the 
soil is exceedingly sandy. Formerly, pine forests covered these 
sand areas but forest fires and lumbering have reduced the 
primeval forests so that, for the most part, aspens have now 
taken their places. Although extensive burned over areas with 
their thick growth of aspens, blueberry bushes and ferns occur 
all about the lake, pentatomids were not found in any numbers 
in such situations. But on the poorer soil which usually sup- 
ports wild raspberry and blackberry plants and, perhaps, a 
thin stand of blue grass or red top, these bugs were most com- 
monly found. There are few cultivated areas of any size in 
the region, but the ones which were visited yielded nothing of 
particular importance in the way of pentatomids. 
The low, boggy land in the vicinity of Douglas Lake itself 
is of considerable extent and supports various types of semi- 
aquatic vegetation. In such situations a few thyreocorids and 
our most valuable find of all, Sciocorus microphthalmus, were 
taken. Arbor vite, tamaracks, spruces and a few balsams occur 
in these bogs and where the shade is dense little or no small 
vegetation suitable for plant feeding bugs is found. However, 
the narrow roadways and numerous trails which wind about in 
what seems to the newcomer an intricate maze are often grown 
over with more or less vegetation which offers food for some 
of the plant feeding forms. 
In the vicinity of the lesser bogs, streams and lakes of the 
region various types of transitional plants occur. These link 
up the aquatic with the strictly terrestrial vegetation and such 
places afforded our best collecting grounds especially toward 
the latter part of the summer. 
The sand beaches at various places around Douglas Lake are 
quite extensive and after some of the prolonged high winds 
pentatomids are occasionally found in the beach drift. At 
some points the beach, a few feet back from the water’s edge 
is grown up in reeds and bunch grass, but such situations did 
not yield the cydnids that might be expected. 
Most of the streams of the region are small, but along their 
moist banks in the cleared and burned over areas weeds, grass- 
