/o 
No. 2. — THE DISTRIBUTION OF NEW ENGLAND 
ODONATA 1 
BY R. HEBER HOWE, Jr. 
Introduction 
Someone has well said that the distribution of animals and plants 
depends on the distribution of biological collectors. By way of 
example the author has collected during five years of intensive 
field work in the small township of Concord, Massachusetts (200 
ft. elevation), eighty-eight of the one hundred and sixty-four 
species of Odonata, or more than one half of those known from all 
New England. Zoogeography is a fascinating and important sub- 
ject of study, but attempts to define too closely the zones and their 
boundaries is an unprofitable task, as a distributional relation to 
pure topography hardly exists. The effects of temperature con- 
trol as modified by northern and southern slopes, interior and lit- 
toral stations, geologic surface exposure, and chemical (halophile) 
conditions, and many other factors, far more subtle, all lend their 
perplexing elements. It is actually true that every collector sooner 
or later finds that he lives at a transition station : species extend 
down to his home from the north, and up to his very dooryard from 
the south. It is because of this fact that the Transition as a defi- 
nite zone seems to be illogical. It should be dispensed with as such, 
and is by many zoogeographists today. 
Nature after all recognizes no Boreal nor Austral regions, but 
only species each a little different in environmental requirement, 
that together occupy as a whole regions where life may within its 
own subtle laws exist. Zones are man's invention, and must if truth- 
ful, be wide and elastic, and without purely mechanical bound- 
aries. No matter how monotonous a geographical area is, diverse 
will be its life; and almost no matter how geographically varied, 
certain similar forms will range over it all. 
The Odonata as a group of insects do not depend for their dis- 
tribution to an appreciable extent on flora (Calvert, Proc. Acad. 
' Contribution from the Entomological Laboratory of the Bussey Institu- 
tion, Harvard University. — No. 186. 
