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mostly in the pupa state, and we bad every liope that they would 

 arrive in as good shape as the first lot. We are much disappointed, 

 therefore, to learn from Mr. Coquillett that the shipment reached him 

 in very poor condition on December 9, three days after the publication 

 of a letter from Mr. Koebele to Mr. Klee, which came on the same 

 steamer. Mr. Klee had some difficulty in getting the boxes from the 

 customhouse, and wrote Mr. Coquillett that "when he got them the 

 boxes were all broken up and had evidently been repacked since Koe- 

 bele packed them for shipment." When Mr. Coquillett received them 

 there were eight tin and two wooden boxes; "all of the tin boxes were 

 mashed flat and their contents were very moldy." There was in them 

 only one living Lestophonus and one of its parasites, one Coccinellid 

 beetle, and a Chrysopa larva. One of the wooden boxes had also been 

 broken open. Mr. Klee, writing later, explains that the ice in the ice- 

 house in which the boxes were confined had fallen upon the packages 

 and smashed some or most of them. It was several days before he 

 could obtain them from the steamer and the contents of those boxes 

 which were x^artly open were covered with mold. He repacked and for- 

 warded them as soon as he could. 



The accident of the falling ice was perhaps impossible to avoid, 

 although carelessness on the part of the steamer hands might have been 

 at the bottom of it. The delay on the part of the custom-house author- 

 ities, however, was no accident, and we have taken steps to prevent its 

 recurrence. The Secretary of the Treasury has very courteously issued 

 an order to the collector of the port at San Francisco to allow future 

 packages to enter free of duties and charges, and to forward them un- 

 opened and without unnecessary delay to Mr. Coquillett. 



A secondary icerya Parasite.- We were again disappointed, although 

 not surprised, to learn from Mr. Koebele's last letter that he had dis- 

 covered a parasite of the Lestoplionus which he has been sending to this 

 country. It was rather to be expected that the hopeful Dipterous para- 

 site would have its enemies, but it was none the less a discouraging 

 thing to find that there is one. Mr. Koebele sent a series of pinned 

 specimens of this secondary parasite to us direct from Australia, and 

 Mr. Coquillett has since forwarded a series which he secured from Mr. 

 Koebele's last sending of the primary parasites. Tbis secondary para- 

 site is a very strange form, and we hope to characterize it in connection 

 with a number of unpublished Icerya enemies in our Annual Keport for 

 1888. It will be sufficient at this time to state that it is a new and re- 

 markable genus of the peculiar Chalcid sub-family EJasminw. Mr. 

 Koebele's warning concerning this secondary parasite was received in 

 abundant time and put Mr. Coquillett on his guard concerning it, and 

 the latter has exercised such care that at last account not one of them 

 has escaped to perpetuate its kind. 



