PACKARD, ON SALT WATER INSECTS. 41 



III. On Insects Inhabiting Salt Water. 

 By a. S. Packard, Jr. 



[Communicated Dec. 7, 1867.] 



The occurrence of insects living in brine or salt water 

 has been noticed by several authors in this country. 



In 1852, Mr. T. K. Peale writes to Capt. H. Stans- 

 bury (Report on the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of 

 Utah, p. 379) that in a mass of exuvi^ of insects brought 

 from the shores of the Great Salt Lake there was an 

 abundance of the larvae and exuvise of the pupse of Chi- 

 ronomus and fragments of other Tipulidge. 



In the same year, Dr. J. L. LeConte described two 

 species of Staphylinids, Thinojpinus pictus Lee. (Annals of 

 the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, vol. v., 

 p. 215), from the shore of the Pacific at San Diego, Cali- 

 fornia; and T. variegatus Lee. (List. Col. N. Amer., p. 

 23; Smithsonian Misc. Coll.), from San Francisco, Cal., 

 and Alaska ? Dr. Le Conte states in the " American Nat- 

 uralist" (vol. ii, p. 329), that they are " found below high 

 water mark on the wet sand. From the variegation of 

 pale yellow and black they are singularly Crustacean-like, 

 both in the larval form and in the perfect state." 



In the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History for Dec. 26, 1866 (vol. xi, p. 3, 1867), Prof. 

 A. E. Verrill states "that the Museum of Yale Colleg-e 

 had received some dipterous larvse from Mono Lake in 

 California, a body of water not only excessively salt, but 

 also strongly alkaline ; together with them had been found 

 a species of Artemia, a genus of Entomostraca allied to 

 Branchipus, which had hitherto been known only in the 

 salt-pans of Europe. The dipterous larv^ [Ephydra] 

 were found in immense numbers, but the fly had not been 

 reared. He had also received eggs, apparently of the 

 same group of insects, from Salt Lake in Texas ; the stick 

 upon which they were laid was covered with salt crystals." 



In Europe, numerous species of Coleoptera have long 

 been known to inhabit saline places and the shores of the 



COMMUNICATIONS KSSBX INSTITUTE, VOL. VI. fi MARCH, 1869. 



