No. 608] SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION 499 



The insect fauna of the lake shore presents material for a 

 study in itself, on which nothing has been published save the 

 material on Diptera by Aldrich, already cited. At the Univer- 

 sity of Utah I left the beginning of a collection of insects taken 

 in or on the waters of the lake, and I recall that a small Corisid 

 was several times seen and some specimens of it taken swimming 

 immersed in the brine near shore. The species appeared to be 

 the same as one common in fresh and slightly salt and sulphur 

 impregnated waters in the Salt Lake valley. 



Probably correlated with the abundance of Ephydra adults as 

 food, may be mentioned a "plague of spiders" with which the 

 resort (Saltair) was troubled during one bathing season, about 

 1910. Several cases of persons being bitten by spiders were re- 

 ported in one of the Salt Lake papers, though I can not vouch 

 for their authenticity. Certain it is that spiders of more than 

 one species were unusually numerous about the pavilion, as I 

 personally observed, and I learned later that the employees went 

 about with brooms every morning before the hour for opening 

 and destroyed as many as possible. The forest of piles and un- 

 derpinning beneath the structure, however, was an inexhaustible 

 reservoir from which the supply was constantly renewed. After 

 the close of the season, no other remedy liaving been found, 

 some employees were kept hnsy foi- works in boats beneath the 

 huge structure collecting and ilcst I'oy in^' tlie »'<z-g cocoons, and the 

 next season there was no .s(M i<ms tfoul)U'. Mimy bushels were 

 thus collected. The second autunui this task i tki up, 



and since that time no further plague of spiders has appeared, 

 but whether autumn cocoon collecting is still kept up I do not 

 know. I have no doubt that the seemingly sudden appearance 

 of the great numbers of spiders was in reality but the time when, 

 owing to the availability of a great food supply and plenty of 

 space for spreading webs, they reached a high point in numbers, 

 the culmination of years of slow increase. 



ClIAS. T. VORHIES 



OX THE FLOKA OF GREAT SALT LAKE 



