Daylight Collecting of Catocala (Lepidoptera: Nocturidae)

Excerpt: Sugaring and attraction to artificial light have long been favorite methods of collecting adults of the genus Catocala, and both have been very successful. Each of the many collectors who uses the English method of applying bait to the trunks of trees has his own preferred mixture. Usually molasses is the base, and fragrance is the measure. Feed molasses is widely used in this country, augmented by various combinations of beer, rum, aromatic oils and decaying fruits. Temperature, humidity, wind and amount of moonlight are all well-known factors affecting the success of bait, whether applied according to the old method or used in the modern variant of bait-traps. The advent of ultra-violet and mercury-vapor light has been a boon to students of this genus. According to the present low level of evidence, certain species would seem to have a preference for either bait or light. Experienced.lepidopterists insist that some species are not attracted to one or the other, but the phenomenon has not at all been carefully studied

John White\u27s Drawings of Papilio Glaucus L. (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae): New Light on the \u27First American Butterfly\u27 and the Problem of Glaucus Versus Antilochus L. Part I: White to Moffet

All American lepidopterists are familiar with the first picture of an American butterfly. William J. Holland\u27s account of one of John White\u27s watercolors of Papilio glaucus L. first appeared as a separate article (Holland, 1929), and was later adapted for the second edition of his immensely popular The Butterfly Book (Holland, 1931). Sub sequent research has added many facts to our knowledge of White\u27s life, and much more can now be said about his paintings and later use of them. A reappraisal of the first identifiable record of a North American butterfly is now possible, and, more important to taxonomists, evidence can be provided to support a decision upon the suggestion of F. Martin Brown (1968) that the name of the yellow form of Papilio glaucus should be antilochus L

Newsletter of the Association of Minnesota Entomologists. Edi ted by John H. Ma s t e r s . Vol. 1, No. 1. [~ctober?1]9 66; No. 2 , not received; No. 3, Feb. 1967; No. 4, Aug. 1967. Free to members of the A.M.E., who pay 2.75ayearforactiveand2.75 a y e a r f o r active and 1.75 for corresponding memberships, which are open to all by contacting John T. Sorensen, 5309 37th Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minn. 55417.

Excerpt: Our brothers in Minnesota have long taken advantage of this good fortune, but only recently has a newsletter appeared to document their activities. It is a folded 24-page silk-screen mimeograph production with heavy stock covers. The inexpensive for math as the usual drawback of muddy type, but a definite improvement can be seen through the course of publication, due to the utilization of better materials. The newsletter accepts contributions on any aspect of entomology in any part of the world, but priority in publication will be given to papers of the North Central Region and to papers by members of the Association

George Starkey, an Early Seventeenth-Century American Entomologist

Between the earliest known North American entomological observations made by John White (Wilkinson, 1973a) and Thomas Hariot, and the beginning of more systematic investigations by John Banister (Ewan and Ewan, 1970) and other collectors in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially those promoted by the London apothecary and naturalist James Petiver (Stearns, 1952; Wilkinson, 1966), a number of persons wrote about insects observed in British America. However, their remarks were usually very brief, and confined to notices of one or two species. Only a few seventeenth-century investigators actually studied North American insects and related forms in situ with any diligence. The earliest of these appears to have been George Starkey (1627 or 1628-1665)

World Guide to Technical Information and Documentation Services. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Paris: UNESCO, 1969. 287 pp. Hardbound, 6.00;paper,6.00; paper, 4.00 (available in U.S.A. from Unipub. Inc., P.O. Box 433, New York City, N.Y. 10016).

Excerpt: This very useful reference volume is a companion to UNESCO\u27s World Guide to Science Information and Documentation Services (1965). It lists and describes the principal centers in each country which provide technical information, either to all investigators or to a restricted clientele. 273 institutions in 73 countries have been included, with an informative yet concise report upon each source. A sampIe entry lists name of repository in the vernacular, English, French and acronym; addresses; brief history; staff; subject coverage; nature of library; nature of abstracting service; whether bibliographies, literature searches or translations are available; information about photoreproduction services; and methods of payment for services. The remarkable proliferation of information sources in science and technology makes such guides not only convenient but necessary

January Collecting in Central Michigan

Excerpt: To the uninitiated reader, searching for adult insects in mid-winter might seem a fruitless task at best. Yet as the List of Michigan Insects and Related Arthropods takes shape, L\u27off-season collecting records are urgently needed by the compilers. Many species of insects thrive when we might wish to stay indoors; the Collembola are good examples, as are the species of Chionea (Diptera: Tipulidae), a genus of wingless crane-flies. We should like to know much more about the distribution of many hardy winter insects, and only increased collecting will enable this

The Genesis of A.R. Grote\u27s Collecting Noctuidae by Lake Erie

Since its serial publication in The Entomologist\u27s Record during 1895, Augustus Radcliffe Grote\u27s Collecting Noctuidae by Lake Erie has become a minor classic of entomological literature. This brief but compelling reminiscence of two and a half months under canvas has long been considered one of the finest of the many accounts which have been written about the pursuit of Lepidoptera, and it is especially treasured by those collectors who, like Grote at Lake Erie, have used the method of \u27sugaring\u27 to capture moths. Surely much of the essay\u27s appeal is due to Grote\u27s facile and unusually colorful literary style; as P. B. M. Allan (1948) has observed, it is given to but few of us to paint like that

The Moth Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Moths of North America. W.J. Holland. Edited by A.E. Brower. New York: Dover Publications, 1968. xxiv, 479 pp. 48 colored plates. $5.00.

Excerpt: Despite its obvious limitations, Holland\u27s Moth Book has been the standard amateur guide to the Heterocera of the United States since its original publication in 1903. Its remarkable popularity has largely been due to its colored plates, which illustrate a good selection of American moths, including a large proportion of such widely collected families as the Sphingidae and Saturniidae, as well as many of the Noctuidae. Holland\u27s work has been the great standby of young collectors for many years, although the text could not really pass muster in 1903, and is so badly out of date in 1968 that republication of the work furnishes a two-edged sword to amateur lepidopterists

Theories on the Nature of Life. Giovanni Blandino, New York: Philosophical Library, 1969. xiv, 374 pp. $6.00.

In a short span, this encyclopedic work summarizes the historical problems of the nature of life. Blandino conducts his narrative in a condensed and highly-packed form that assumes the nature of an outline. His own ideas are explained in the second part of the book. In the author\u27s words, his conception is that vegetative biological phenomena (1) are material deterministic phenomena and therefore, in order to produce them, fixed laws inherent in matter are both necessary and sufficient..

Botanical Latin: History, Grammar, Syntax, Terminology and Vocabulary. William T. Stearn. London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1966. xiv, 566pp.($14.75)

Excerpt: As W. T. Stearn reminds us in the preface to this attractive and welcome work, the realm of literature which a knowledge of botanical Latin opens to botanists is a strange barbarous place for classicists; invited into it as an interpreter, a good classical scholar may well feel like Alice meeting Humpty Dumpty through the looking-glass. The same perplexity is experienced by the entomologist; those of us educated in the Latin of Cicero and Pliny are ill equipped to name new species or even to translate Latin descriptions, as biological Latin developed long ago into a stylized form not easily conquered without a specific aid