64 STATEN IsLAND INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
mouth. He captured the snake, kept it alive for a time, and later 
gave it to me. On Gardiners Island a fisherman told me in 1909, 
that during the previous summer he had tried to raise some 
chickens but that a considerable number were eaten by a black- 
snake which he at last was able to surprise and kill. One of the 
most interesting tree-climbing activities of a blacksnake that has 
come under the writer’s notice was at Long Pond, near Culvers 
Gap, New Jersey. The snake saw me coming along the.shore of 
the pond and instead of climbing over the bushes on which he was 
lying, and thus making his escape, he climbed up a tree, coiling 
about one of its topmost branches. I threw stones and struck the 
tree violently, but he would not come down. 
The last blacksnake found by the writer on the island, previous 
to the one at Silver Lake Park, was on May 18, 1914, near Ward 
Point, Fottenville, when a dead one was discovered. As usual in 
such cases it was being devoured by burying beetles. 
Records of Flies Belonging to the Family Hippoboscidae Chiefly 
from Staten Island, New York? 
WILLIAM T. Davis 
Recently Dr. Joseph Bequaert, in going over the Diptera in the 
writer’s collection, determined the species of the above-mentioned 
family, which are remarkable because the larva remains in the 
body of the mother until it is mature and ready to enter the pupal 
state. In one instance we are unable to give the host on which the 
specimen was found. In New Jersey there have been reported but 
five species belonging to this family, three of which are here re- 
corded from Staten Island. All are parasites on birds. 
Ornithomyta anchineuria Speiser (pallida Say). Yankee Lake, 
Wurtsboro, Sullivan Co., Sep. 8, 1905, on Maryland yellowthroat 
(James P. Chapin). Richmond, Staten Island, Sep. 8, 1907, on 
Carolina wren (James P, Chapin). | 
1 Read at the regular meeting of the Institute October 19, 1920. 
