226 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
that, if I held the net motionless in front of a flying male he 
would promptly alight on the edge of it. 
But specimens may be captured directly with little trouble at 
morning or evening, or on cloudy days, when they are less active. 
Sometimes they assemble in large numbers on the pendant 
boughs of a willow bush beside a stream at evening, forming 
with their crimson streaked wings and bodies of black and 
bronze against the willow background, so charming a picture 
that the collector will hesitate to disturb it. 
The nymphs cling to plants in the rapids; occasionally they live 
on bulrush stems that fringe the wave-washed shore of a lake. 
Transformation takes place just above the edge of the water, 
and, with us, in the month of August. Our common species I 
have bred several times in widely separated localities. It does 
not occur at Saranac Inn. It has been several times taken at the 
head of Cayuga lake at Ithaca. This species (H. americana) 
may be separated from H. tricolor ag follows: 
KEY TO SPECIES 
a Tibiae with the exterior side yellow..........-.2.0.c0n americana 
26. Tibiae entirely lackone5 ios f ccd ee be ewes cee triceohar 
Hetaerina americana Fabricius 
Plate 12 
1798 Agrion americana Fabricius, Ent. Syst. Suppl. p.287 
1889 Lestes basalis Say, Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. Jour. 8:35 
18389 Calopteryx americana Burmeister, Handb. Ent. 2:826 
1854 Hetaerina americana Selys, Monogr. Calopteryginae, p. 131, 
pl.12, fig.3. 
1861 Hetaerina americana Hagen, Synopsis Neur. N. Am. p.60 
1863 Hetaerina americana Walsh, Ent. Soc. Phila. Proc. 2:211, 
267 
1875 Hetaerina americana Hagen, Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. Proc. 
18:23 
1898 Hetaerina americana Calvert, Am. Ent. Soc. Trans, 20:228 
1895-97 Hetaerina americana Calvert, N. Y. Ent. Soe. Jour. 
3:42 and 5:92 (listed from Keeseville, Ithaca and Albany county) 
1895 Hetaerina americana Kellicott, Cincinnati Soc. Nat. Hist. 
Jour. (habits) 
1899 Hetaerina americana Kellicott, Odon. Ohio, p.4 
1900 Hetaerina americana Williamson, Dragon Flies Ind. p.254 
1901 Hetaerina americana Howard, Insect Book, pl.46, fig.11 
1901 Hetaerina americana Calvert, Biol. Centr. Am. vol. Neur. 
p.26-29, pl.2, fig.1-17 (a most complete account of imago) 
