LORQUINIA 
Published by ihe Lorquin Natural History Club 
(Org-anized— August 1913) 
Volume II 
Number 3 
Los Angeles, Cal., October 1917 
Subscription 
SI Per Year 
INSECT COLLECTING ON A MOUNTAIN TRAIL 
Alonzo Davis. 
About 7:15 on the morning of June 9th, 1917, Mr. Grinnell and 
I started from Pasadena, riding to the end of the Lincoln Avenue 
car Hne and then walking to the beginning of the trail up the Arroyo 
Seco. The first three hundred feet of this trail is the worst of the 
whole trip. About a mile up the Arroyo, at the foot of the Sister 
Elsie Peak trail, Mr. Grinnell found a small salamander. We filled 
our canteens at the stream and started up the trail, which was quite 
brushy at first, and we saw numerous flies and bees in the brush. 
We saw peculiar black bees of which we caught ten or twelve. 
At about 2000 feet altitude I took the first beetle, an Acuiaedcra 
angelica. From there on the beetles grew rather common, and then 
gradually scarcer, till few were taken. They were most common at 
an altitude of about 3500 to 4000 feet. Flies, bees, wasps and butter- 
flies abounded and a few grasshoppers were also taken. 
Lizards were common. The ones we saw were the fence lizard 
and the brown shouldered lizard. We saw a striped racer as it 
rushed down a wash. At about 4000 feet I heard a sudden whir and 
stopped short till I could locate the cause of the sound. It was a 
rattlesnake about two feet long, black, banded wkh creamy white. 
It went under a shelving rock beside the trail. I rolled the stone 
over so as to pin the snake down, but he got out and went under 
another rock where I couldn't catch him. We went up to about 4500 
or 5000 feet, took of¥ our packs, hunted moths and other dusk-fliers, 
watched the lights in the valley below, and then went to bed. 
In the morning- there was an ocean of fog stretching as far as 
we could see. The sun's rays turned the fog pink, and the tops of 
the mountains looked like jagged islands in a pink sea. We started 
down about eight o'clock. On the way down we saw a pair of band- 
tailed pigeons flying very rapidly about sixty feet above the trail. 
All the way down we saw small green Chrysomelids on the Cilia. 
There is also a curious, sticky plant, Hulsea heterochroma, growing at 
about 4000 feet, in the sandy leaf mould. Near the foot of the trail 
we saw a Stejneger's whip-tailed lizard. 
