Only recently has serious taxonomic study of the genitalia of Membracidae been undertaken. Authors such as Fowler (1894-97), Van Duzee (1908), Funkhouser (1917) and Lawson (1922) made only cursory studies or objected to the dissection and treatment necessary for such a study. Caldwell's (1949) revision of the Ceresini based on male genitalia is the first paper of its kind for the Membracidae.

During September, 1950, 23,180 specimens of the European earwig, Forficula auricularia L., were collected in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the purpose of recovering the imported parasite Bigonicheta setipennis (Fall.). Great fluctuations were observed in the number of insects caught from day to day. This paper is an attempt to assess the role of various climatic factors in these fluctuations.

The diamond beetle, Entimus nobilis Oliv., is a weevil whose larva causes irregular tubercles on the woody tissues of the twining vine Stigmaphyllum littorale Juss., cultivated in the American tropics. Bruch (1932) reports that the adult weevil may be from 10 to 28 mm. in length. The specimens in which the proventriculus was examined were adults 28 mm. long from a series of pinned insects collected in Brazil.

The male of Ixodes soricis Gregson was discovered at Silver Creek, British Columbia, in 1948 (Gregson, 1949). The tick was found with its hypostome fully inserted into the lateral body wall of a partially engorged female of the same species. It was not described because the specimen in situ represented an interesting example of either accidental parasitism (Anastos, 1948), or more likely an unsuccessful attempt at copulation, since it is questionable whether the males, like those of some other species of Ixodes, ever feed. The recent discovery, however, by the junior author, of another specimen, in a collection of ticks from a shrew taken at Seattle, Washington, permits the following description of the male of this species.