268 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



COLLECTING INSECTS OF THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 



By Vernon L. Kjxlogg 



The animal life of the high mountains, in summer, consists 

 chiefly of insects — and Sierra Club members. There are a 

 few other kinds of mammals, a few kinds of fishes and rep- 

 tiles, more kinds of birds, and many kinds of insects. In 

 the high mountains, as in the lowland, it is the Age, now, of 

 Man and Insects. There is only one species of man, but he 

 dominates the world by his wit. There are nearly 4CX),ooo 

 species of insects, and they do their dominating by virtue of 

 numbers. I do not know how many kinds of insects there are 

 resident in the Sierra Nevada, but the number runs into the 

 thousands. Of them all, the most conspicuous, and in many 

 ways the most interesting, are the butterflies. I have tried to 

 tell about a few of them in an earlier Bulletin (Vol. IX, No. 

 2, June, 1913). Other fairly conspicuous and attractive ones 

 are the moth-like caddis flies that flutter in the foliage on the 

 bank of streams, the great, brown, wood-boring beetles, that 

 are seen occasionally in the forest belt, the curious soft-bodied 

 white ants that swarm out occasionally when a fallen log is 

 chopped into, the granite-colored katydids that look like their 

 green cousins of the lowlands except for the adaptive change 

 in color, the busy Syrphid flies and bees of the lush gardens of 

 wild flowers in glacial meadows, and the ever-active, indus- 

 trious ants working out their marvelous lives under the feet 

 of all the other mountain creatures. Some insects, too, there 

 are, that are fairly conspicuous but not attractive. The mos- 

 quitoes are the best known and most insistently noticeable of 

 these. 



The more one looks the more one sees. Some trampers will 

 go through the mountains for a whole summer and come out 

 without having noticed any other kinds of insects than mos- 

 quitoes and a few large butterflies, like the black and yellow 

 swallow-tails of the lower meadows. But anyone who will 

 can scrape acquaintance with many kinds of insects, some of 



