﻿Field and Forest 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL 



DEVOTED TO THE NATURAL SCIENCES, 



Vol. II.— JUNE, 1877.— No. 12. 



Insects in Colorado. 



About a year ago we gave in this journal a short article on the 

 '•'Comparative Scarcity of Insects in the Mountains of Colorado." 

 Mr. Meehan, in the January number of Popular Science Monthly, 

 writing on the fertilization of flowers by insect agency, quotes a por- 

 tion of our remarks as bearing him out in a previous statement to that 

 effect, which had been questioned. To a request from him for a list 

 of insects found in the Rocky Mountains, a letter in reply, written by 

 Mr. J. Duncan Putnam, is published in the March number of the 

 same journal, which would go to prove that insects are not scarce in 

 the locality in question. 



It is not our purpose to discuss the question further, but, as Mr 

 Putnam remarks that "the 'entomologists' of Mr. Meehan's party 

 were certainly unfortunate in finding so few insects," to state in jus- 

 tice to the entomologists of the party that their work was confined to 

 the month of August in a single year, while Mr. Putnam gives the 

 experience of a whole season. We certainly used every endeavor to 

 make collections, even to setting up lights in canned fruit boxes at 

 night, to allure the noctural species, and with very slender returns for 

 the effort ; and, as for collecting by day, in the previous article I make 

 the statement that " after a few hours collecting, it was not an easy 

 matter to find anything strikingly different from the dozen or so species 

 secured in the collecting box." Perhaps fifty specimens of a com- 

 mon butterfly would make a sufficient abundance for the fertilization 



