Dec., IQI2 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 23 



of the air, a dew that descended upon flowers," as if it had a 

 special commission to fall only upon them. 



The suctorial mouth of the flea was described by Mouf^et 

 as "the point of his nib is something hard that he may make 

 it enter the better and it must necessarily be hollow that he may 

 suck out the blood and carry it in." Furthermore, Mouffet 

 says, "the lesser, leaner and younger fleas are, the sharper they 

 bite, the fat ones being more inclined to tickle and play. " 



And as for mosquitoes, "the gnats in America do so splash 

 and cut that they will pierce through very thick clothing, so that 

 it is excellent sport to behold how ridiculously the barbarous 

 people, when they are bitten, will frisk and skip and slap with 

 their hands, their thighs, buttocks, shoulders, arms and sides 

 even as a carter doth a horse. " 



This sounds very much as if Mouffet had at one time been 

 in New Jersey. Conditions are now; however, considerably 

 better. 



An Early Record of Swarms of Lachnostema (Coleop.) in Kansas. 



By F. M. Webster, Washington, D. C. 



It is not often that we get glimpses of the out-of-door actions 

 of insects in a country not yet defaced by the advance of civiHza- 

 tion. The knowledge that we do get is generally confined to more 

 or less careful and complete collections made by naturahsts passing 

 through the country, stopping only to camp for a night, or, perhaps 

 during a stormy day. Besides, it seems as though even these 

 occasional glimpses given by travelers are doomed to become 

 covered up in a mass of other inforaiation, and so lost sight of as to 

 be overlooked by entomologists. A good illustration of this is to 

 be found in Francis Parkman's "The California and Oregon Trail." 



Sometime about the middle or perhaps the latter part of May, 

 1846, when passing from Fort Leavenworth over the St. Joseph 

 trail, east of the Big Blue River, probably in a section of country 

 now included in northern Nemaha, or, possibly Marshall County, 

 Kansas, swarms of Lachnostema were encountered. It was during 

 a pleasant evening on the prairies and the air was observed to be 



