SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I93O IOO, 



altitude, and a splendid place for collecting in June. I visited the 

 summit twice. It is becoming well known to students of the flies from 

 the considerable number of new species which have been described 

 from specimens captured there. Entomologists stationed at the Uni- 

 versity of Idaho (in Moscow) and those at the Washington State 

 College (in Pullman, Washington, only ten miles west of Moscow) 

 have done a great deal of collecting on Moscow Mountain, which 

 is the " type locality " of the new species just mentioned. Some 20 

 years ago I collected a new species of flesh fly at the summit, described 

 afterward as Sarcophaga thatuna; curiously enough it has never been 

 found anywhere except at the extreme summit of this mountain, and 

 was common there on both my visits this year. 



The vicinity of Spokane, Washington, is also a diversified, semi- 

 forested region lower in altitude than Moscow, but with many fine 

 streams and lakes, which improve the collecting, as flies are generally 

 fond of moist places. I collected at several places along streams in 

 the outskirts of Spokane, and twice ascended Mount Spokane, the 

 summit of which reaches an altitude of 5,808 feet. Little or no collect- 

 ing of flies has been done on this mountain hitherto. The species are 

 mostly the same as found on Mount Moscow, but there is a much 

 larger alpine area. There is a fine road to the summit, and I should 

 have spent more time there but for the fact that the mountain is 35 

 miles from Spokane. Moreover, I found the summit to be decidedly 

 colder than that of Moscow Mountain, so that bright sunshine was 

 necessary to make collecting of flies successful, as these insects are 

 very sensitive to cold and disappear when the sun clouds over, even on 

 warm afternoons. The total time that I was able to collect near the 

 summit was much reduced bv cloudy intervals during the two days 

 I was there. There are a number of kinds of large, showy flies here, 

 which are very characteristic of alpine situations in western North 

 America, the same ones with some exceptions being found on many 

 different mountains over a wide area. It is always thrilling to the 

 entomologist to attain the altitude where they occur, even though 

 many of them are well represented in collections and are therefore not 

 especially desirable to collect. 



Leaving the region in which many years of collecting had made me 

 rather familiar with the species, I devoted a week to collecting in the 

 vicinity of the town of Smith River, California, situated on the shore 

 of the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Smith River, about six miles 

 south of the Oregon state line. Being at sea level this locality might 

 be thought to compare with Lewiston, Idaho, in its insect population ; 

 but this is not at all the case, as the narrow coastal strip is notably cool 



