Dec, '02] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 317 



scarce. A great many species may be found during a collect- 

 ing trip, but seldom are many individuals seen at one time, ex- 

 cept in the case of a few species. 



I have never seen them at any one time, in the tropics, as 

 plentiful as I have seen them during some favorable day in the 

 White Mountains. This has been not only my experience, 

 but that of other collectors. Such men as Bates and Wallace 

 speak of this peculiarity noticed while collecting in Brazil, on 

 the Amazon River. 



There is one thing in a collector's favor in the tropics, how- 

 ever, that I have noticed, and that is that a larger percentage 

 of those captured during the day are perfect than are those 

 caught in the North. One seldom sees ragged, worn-out 

 specimens such as one often sees in the North. It is true that 

 one sometimes sees specimens with a piece gone from the wing, 

 but most of the specimens look as though they had not flown 

 long. 



The reason for this may be that the struggle for existence 

 is so great among all insect life in the tropics, that individuals 

 do not live long enough to become worn, but soon after laying 

 their eggs, and many times before, they become the prey of 

 insect-eating animals. 



Also in the same number of the News is an article by K. J. 

 Smith in which he incidentally refers to the Denton Mount as 

 " rather expensive." I wish to take exception to this state- 

 ment and am prepared to show that the Denton Mount is less 

 expensive than any other method of mounting which at all 

 protects the specimen against destructive insects, dust and the 

 warping of the wings. 



Bolivian Lepidoptera (See page 293) — I think it well for me to let 

 you know exactly how the work progresses on the first volume of my 

 descriptions of new butterflies, because there seems to be considerable 

 misunderstanding as to the nature of the work, etc. The plates and 

 printed matter that I have already sent out are simply complimentary 

 and to give an idea of what I was doing. A copy for the printer for the 

 first volume is already completed and will contain about fifty plates and 

 120 pages, but the work on the plates requires time, and it may be two 

 or three years yet before the first volume will be ready. — A. G. Weeks, Jr. 



