REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST I907 167 



under street lamps will not need to be told that on many nights even 

 in midsummer insects are not out to be caught. A few moths and 

 midges may be expected almost any kind of a night, but warm 

 sultry still nights preceding a downpour of rain are apt to be best. 

 In the Adirondacks a ^dampness and chill often settle over the land 

 jnst after sinidown, putting an end to the prospects for good lantern 

 work of many a promising afternoon. During our stay at Old 

 Forge hardly more than a half dozen nights yielded a strictly first- 

 class catch — a catch of thousands of specimens and of scores of 

 different species. 



A tent trap. Quite as an experiment, and without expecting 

 any large results, we made a tent of cheese cloth [the one shown 

 in plate 8] and set it directly in the bed of Beaver Meadow brook, 

 just above the fish ponds, to capture and retain such winged insects 

 as might upon transformation arise from the surface of the water 

 beneath it. We anticipated that such insects would fly or climb 

 up to the roof of the tent and remain there, attracted by the light 

 above, and we thought that perhaps some of them might be col- 

 lected thence more easily than they could be obtained in any other 

 way. Our expectations were greatly exceeded. 



The tent was made of cheese cloth, supported on three .strong 

 cords. The cloth was folded about each cord and sewed on the 

 inside, so as to leave no small crevices into which the insects might 

 crawl and hide. The ridge cord was stapled to the top of two 

 stakes \^scc pi. 8], and anchored to stones at each end, and the 

 two end cords were carried out at the sides and similarly anchored. 

 The edges of the cheese cloth dipped into the surface of the water, 

 and the tw^o sides (upstream and downstream) that felt the force 

 of the current, were anchored in place with stones. Thus secured, 

 the tent withstood a number of freshets that occurred during the 

 month it was in operation.. 



It covered a water area six feet square. The stream bed here 

 was covered with stones of various sizes, mostly matted over with 

 moss. [pi. 9, fig. i]. In a little preliminary collecting we had 

 discovered that this moss sheltered some interesting stone fly 

 and May fly nymphs, but we were not prepared to anticipate 

 that such numbers of them as appeared in the tent later, could 

 actually be present there. 



The tent was set up on the 15th of August and maintained in 

 operation for a month, its catch being removed daily, so long as 

 other work permitted. Our first peep into it on the morning of 



