lo ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [January, 



On a Florida Beach. 



By Annie Trumbull Slosson. 



It has always been a favorite paradox of mine, one which I 

 have often repeated to young friends — the smaller your field the 

 more work you can do. All out-door collectors will know what 

 I mean. If obliged by circumstances, whatever they may be, 

 to remain in one particular locality, however limited, one is apt 

 to observe interesting details, discover new objects which are 

 overlooked when one can wander far and wide at his own sweet 

 will. I found this so, very markedly, last winter in Florida. 



I spent three months, from December to April, at Palm 

 Beach, on Lake Worth. During the greater part of that time 

 I was, owing to the serious illness of a friend, confined closely 

 to the house. We were staying at a hotel situated directly 

 upon the ocean beach. It was necessary, for some weeks, that 

 all my collecting should be done within sight of the hotel, that 

 I might be near at hand and summoned in any emergency. 

 And the time of my absence from the house never exceeded an 

 hour. 



I had, for years, known this beach well and thought I had 

 exhausted its resources, but I made many interesting discover- 

 ies in those brief and restricted rambles. 



All along the shore grows tall, stout beach grass — a Uniola. 

 Mr. Schwarz has written of the insects living upon this grass. 

 I found many of the species mentioned by him and one or two 

 which he had not found there. A small, black weevil, a 

 Barid, was always on the sand near the roots of this grass. It 

 proved to be Casey's Limnobaris limbifer. I found dozens of 

 this species. I tried to investigate its life history', but in vain. 

 I could not find it in any stage, except as imago, though I feel 

 confident of its living in root or stalk of the Uniola. A little 

 higher up and farther from the water another weevil was very 

 abundant on the sand under low plants. This was Acalles cla- 

 vatus. One of the convolvulus family, Iponicea pes-capri, or 

 goats-foot morning-glory trails over the sandy beach every- 

 where. It has roundish .shining leaves and its stem grows 

 from ten to twenty feet in length. This is the native food 



