1892.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. II3 



all one ever gets for that meal in Mexico, was despatched, I sallied 

 forth net in hand, and, coming to the outskirts of the city entered 

 an unfenced garden containing about half an acre and began 

 operations. The first insects seen were many of the half grown 

 young of a gigantic grasshopper, Rhomalea sp. ? black in color 

 and in life streaked on the sides with bright crimson. They 

 seemed to be a social sort of creature, as thirty or forty of them 

 would be found feeding together on a single stalk of corn in much 

 the same manner as the larvae of certain of our moths feed in 

 communities or droves. Unlike the young grasshoppers of this 

 country they were very sluggish in their action, being easily cap- 

 tured with the fingers. After scooping up a number of them, 

 together with many of the young and adults of a large Hemip- 

 teran, Sagotyhis confiiienlus Say, which were making a meal on 

 the leaves of a gourd-vine, I gave my attention to the butterflies, 

 and passed the morning in that one garden, securing about seventy 

 specimens, representing half that number of species of those at- 

 tractive insects for which I was primarily in search. 



And right here let me say that during that whole morning, yes, 

 during the whole of my collecting in Mexico, I was impressed 

 with a feeling which probably comes to every collector in a strange 

 country — a feeling of being lost among such a multitude of forms 

 of which one is actually in search, but knows but little about. 

 After a naturalist has been in one locality for some time he be- 

 comes familiar with the different forms of life about him; knows, 

 for example, most of the plants, birds and insects, if not by name 

 at least by association. He thus becomes able to detect in an 

 instant anything which is new or rare, and a certain thrill of de- 

 light comes to him when such a form is seen. But in a country 

 where everything is new, where one may pick up the most com- 

 mon species thinking it to be rare, or, happening upon a small 

 group of something rare, take some of them and let the rest 

 alone believing them to be common, and afterwards, when too 

 late, find out and regret the mistake; in such a locality the col- 

 lecting, to me, loses a certain degree of its charm. 



Numerous as are the insects in a tropical country, it is impos- 

 sible for one person in a short time to make anything like a thor- 

 ough collection in all the orders, even in a restricted locality. 

 Lepidoptera and Orthoptera were what I wanted especially, and 

 of them I collected every species I could find. I also took such 



