1894.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 27 1 



MT. WASHINGTON AGAIN. 



By Annie Trumbull Slosson. 



Mt. Washington certainly knows and appreciates its true friends. 

 It treats with warmth, sunshine and geniality those who seek it 

 year after year in the right spirit. Again I had on the summit 

 this season a whole week of ideal weather for collecting. We 

 went up the mountain in the afternoon of July i6th. The day 

 had been bright, warm and still. Our old friend the sphagnostic 

 was again with us, carrying his big tin botanical case for hold- 

 ing peat-mosses from the Lake of the Clouds, dwarf willows and 

 other alpine specimens. But the two mouse hunters of last 

 summer, and the enthusiastic botanist from Boston were absent 

 and sadly missed. As usual, I began to find specimens just as 

 soon as I arrived. The window of my room furnished at once 

 several interesting insects, chiefly Diptera. One of these has 

 been pronounced by Mr. Coquillett a new species of Sapromyza, 

 and given by him the MS. name of w ashing tonicB, in honor of 

 our grand old mountain. Day after day of the same bright, 

 warm, still weather succeeded. In the middle of the day the 

 sunshine was really too warm for comfort. One noon the ther- 

 mometer recorded 90° on front platform; I never before saw so 

 much insect life on the mountain. In fact, I have rarely seen as 

 much in any locality. The air swarmed with tiny creatures, flies, 

 gnats, aphidae, winged ants. Strangely enough, the insect fauna 

 seemed quite unlike that of a year ago. Not one of the brilliant 

 beetles, Corynibites respleyidens, so very plentiful last year, was 

 taken; nor did I see Aiithophilax att'enuatus ^ Scotodes atnericanuni 

 or Cephaloon lepinrides, all common last season. But I added so 

 many fine insects to my list not seen hitherto that I did not deeply 

 regret the absence of the old friends. For the first time in all 

 my collecting on the summit I took a few moths in the evening 

 at light. On three successive nights moths flew into the hall of 

 the hotel and were captured; I took, thus several specimens of 

 that fine noctuid, Carneades opipara Morr. , two of Pachnobia 

 wockei Moeschler, and one Semiophora elimata, the badicollis of 

 Grote's list. Two or three Geometridae also came in and a few 

 microlepidoptera; and one evening, quite late, just as I had given 

 up the hope of any capture that night, there flew in and settled 

 on the wall a fine, fresh moth quite new to me. It seemed to be 



