-~3ae- et 
Mrs. C. VY. Riley has donated to the library of the National Museum 
. the scrap-books of economic entomology which were kept by her husband, the 
late C. V. Riley, and which cover a period of his activity from 1865 to 1894, 
| These volumes, about 100 in number, are of about the size of the Yearbooks. of 
the Department of Agriculture. They contain many articles of extreme histori- 
cal interest, notes and papers published by Riley, and in some cases repre- 
Sent the only available copies of the short articles which appeared in va- 
} 
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rious popular magazines and newspapers, In giving these scrap-books to the 
| Museum, Mrs. Riley wished to have them housed in the same place as the 
| Riley collection of insects. This donation is of great importance, as it 
will make available mach information otherwise very difficult to obtain. 
Draw oA. Chapin left Washington early in December for a month's ° var 
‘cation. He was for two weeks in the American Museum. of Natural History, 
‘New York, examining species of Ptilodactyla from Central America and the 
West Indies, and discussing with the men there the supplement to the Leng 
check list. ‘He also spent ‘a day with Charles Schaeffer at the ai dui a biu- 
seum, examining the Coleoptera collection, 
In December the larval collections of Coleoptera received tio 
unusually acceptabhe additions. One was-a larva of wns halticine beetle 
_Sphaeroderma testaccum Fatr., which was collected and given to the Museum by 
rs. 2. Rosenberg, ¢ of Copenhag cen, Denmark, The species mines the leaves of 
Carduus crispus. This genus of Halticinae has never before been known in 
the larval stage. There is,one American species of this genus, 9§.° opima, 
Leconte, the larva of which is unimown, and which would be a very useful and 
valuable addition to our larval collection. The second interesting addition 
consists of the larva, pupa, and prepupal cells of the clerid Callimerus 
arcufer Chapin, which was collected and reared by R. W. Paine, from Suva, 
Fiji, where it has evidently ‘been - introduced, as the species was originally. 
described from material from the Straits Settlements. This clerid larva_1s 
unusuzlly interesting, as it belongs to a group in which no larvae navel See 
viously known, and represents a genus the taxonomic position of which has 
been in dispute. Dr. Boving is planning to prepare a description of this 
larva, and will set forth the characters which show its relation to other 
clerid larvae. 
Dr. Wm. A. Hoffman, of the School of Tropical Wedicine at San Juan,’ 
Porto Rico, spent a few days in the Division of Insects studying the biting 
gnats of the genus Culicoides and related forms. 
— Grahauw Fairchild, of- Harvard University, visited the Division Gin. 13a 
) sects during Christmas week and worked on the Lepidoptera collections. 
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