1881. | Entomology. 143 
M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, for 1879, contains an ornitho- 
logical report on observations and collections made in portions of 
California, Nevada and Oregon, by Assistant H. W. Henshaw. 
Mr. Henshaw is now in Oregon and Washington Territory, tak- 
ing the census of the Indian reservations in that region, but will 
doubtless find opportunities for ornithological studies in that in- 
teresting section. Under the heading ‘“Infusoria as parasites,” 
Mr. W. S. Kent, in the Populon Science Review, enumerates ten 
species of Flagellata and fifteen species of Ciliata which are genu- 
ine parasites in the viscera of birds, frogs, &c., ducks and geese, 
house-fly, the blood of Indian rats, a nematode worm, the com- 
mon cockroach, a myriopod (Julus), a water beetle, earthworm, a 
marine planarian of several fresh water snails, besides Dr. Salis- 
bury’s Asthmatos ciliaris, which he regards as an active agent in 
the wong gaserge of one form of hay asthma or hay fever. n 
recent paper in Kosmos, Fritz Miller describes a Brazilian ay 
( Rileiccona. Deen J with two forms of females. 
ENTOMOLOGY .' 
Larva Hapits oF BEE-FLIEs (BoMBYLUD#&).—In the last num- 
ber of the American Entomologist, we gave from advance sheets of 
the Second Report of the United States Entomological rhein 
sion an account of the larval habits of Systcechus and Triodite 
showing that they prey on locust eggs, and drawing the following 
conclusions: 
The discovery of the “parasitism” of these bee-flies upon 
locust-eggs at once 
suggests a comparison 
with the similar diver- 
sity of parasitic habits 
among the Meloidz as 
given in our first re- 
port, some of them in- 
festing bee-cells, while 
others, as the true 
blister-beetles (Lyttini), on 
eed on locust eggs. 
© Anthracids are gf Sitio: Jara 2 hd fom 
now united by the best. 7 z. aa thiabdible : é, left maxilla ; hr prothoracic spira- 
authorities with the cle; g, anal spiracle (after Rile 
Bombyliidz, of which family as a whole Osten Sacken has said, 
they are “perhaps the most characteristic and one of the most 
abundantly represented families of Diptera in the western region, 
including California.” The abundance of blister-beetles is also 
well known to characterize this region, and we have shown how 
_ abundance i is connected with the abundance of locusts, It is 
is department is edited by Pror. C. V. ae Washington, D. C., to whom 
phen tate books for notice, ior sihoatd be sen 
