Fota armata Grote.

This has somewhat the form of Stilbia; the fringes are long on secondaries. A second female like type in size has the black submedian dash wanting, and the filling on cell, but hind wings are like type in being pale fuscous. Base of forewings above pale ochrey shaded. Another has the primary all gray; Armata may be known by its larger size, fuscous secondary and different sculpture of clypeal armature.

Whether the following are really different I do not know I they appear to be so most certainly.

Every collection of western Bythoscopidæ that the author has Examined has had a more or less heterogeneous assemblage of forms closely resembling Idiocerus alternatus. These have been somewhat Indiscriminately divided between alternates, ramentosus and several MS names of Uhler‖s in classification, or not determined at all. At the time of publication of the key to this genus, the material at hand was not sufficient to warrant the descriptions of these forms, and they were omitted. Since then the author has paid special attention to the collecting of this, group in Colorado, and has received a long series of specimens from the Pacific Coast, mainly from the collection of Mr. C. Livingstone. With this material it has been possible to accurately define a number of these species and clear up much of the obscurity in this section of the genus. During the progress of this study several other new species and varieties have been described, and are also presented here.

For many years I have felt reasonably certain that the North American species of Hydaticus identified as stagnalis Fab. was not that species, and I have become entirely convinced on this point since I have had the opportunity of a critical examination of a series of the true stagnalis kindly sent to me by the late Dr. Alois Zimmerman of Munich.

Dactylopius Irishi, sp. n.

♀.—Adult dark red, forming a very convex chalk-white ovisac about 3 millim, long and 2½ high, the sacs clustered on the twigs of the plant at the nodes, from two to ten at a node. Eggs and newly-hatched larvæ pale yellow.

Adult ♀, after being boiled and flattened on a slide, nearly circular, about 2 mm. long. The insects do not stain the liquor potassæ on boiling, but the body contains a dull crimson pigment, partly retained in boiled specimens.

The beetle fauna of Labrador, like the literature dealing with it, is very poor. Besides old records of singlc species and incomplete lists, the only papers of importance are those by Sherman (1910), Brown (1930, 1932), and Eidmann (1935), and only Sherman lists all of the Labrador species known at the time. The fauna of northernmost Labrador is touched upon by Blair (1933) and Brown (1937).

The black onion fly was observed as an eneniy of onions as early as 1865, but no positive published records of similar injuries were brought to the writer's knowledge until more recent years. This fly is a native species, and although recorded as occurring in New Jersey, it has not attracted attention save in the States of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and there are, therefore, reasons for believing that it is practically restricted, at least as a pest, to the middle western region and does not extend very far east or south of the states mentioned.

The carrot rust fly, Psila rosae F., is a major pest of carrots, Daucus carota L. (Apiaceae), in the principal production areas of Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia (Boivin 1994), as well as in temperate Europe and New Zealand (Ellis and Hardman 1992). Larvae cause damage by tunneling into the roots (Boivin 1994), reducing both yield and marketability. The insect was first recorded in Canada in 1885 but was not reported in Newfoundland until the 1930s (McClanahan and Niemczyk 1963). By the 1950s, P. rosae had spread from an initial infestation around St. John's to commercial farms and home gardens throughout the carrot-growing areas of Bonavista and Conception bays in eastern Newfoundland (Boivin 1994).

Freeze-drying has become widely accepted as a means of concentrating and preserving substances without destroying biological activity, and is becoming increasingly important in various entomological and bacteriological studies. The methods and tvpes of apparatus used have been recently reviewed by Harris (1954). The apparatus described in this paper was developed at the Entomology Laboratory, Ottawa, for drying small quantities of insect tissue. It is sturdy and may be easily and cheaply constructed from readily available laboratory supplies with common machine-shop tools.

In a recently completed study involving pheromone trapping of the winter moth, Operophtera brumata (L.), and the Bruce spanworm, O. bruceata (Hulst), on Vancouver Island (Pivnick et al. 1988), I noticed that O. bruceata had wing colouration different from sympatric O. brumata. The west coast O. bruceata has a pale yellow-orange costal margin on the underside of the forewings and this is faint to absent in O. brumata (Fig. 1). It is also absent from O. bruceata in Saskatoon, which is interesting because some authors consider the west coast population of O. bruceata to be a separate species: the western winter moth, O. occidentalis (see Ferguson 1978; Pivnick et al. 1988). Descriptions of O. bruceata (Brown 1962) and O. brumata (Cuming 1961), and a taxonomic key to these two species (Eidt et al. 1966), do not mention any distinctive wing markings that could be used to separate the two species.

In the same salt meadows north of Bathurst, N. B., where Mr. Brown and I captured the recently described race of Coenonympha inornata (1939, Can. Ent., LXXI, 266) we took a series of specimens of L. dorcas Kby. which on examination, after spreading, appears to constitute an undescribed and rather strikingly different race. The butterflies were by no means common; the first specimens were taken on August 6, evidently freshly emerged, and by dint of careful searching during the next four or five days we were able to capture a series of about 50 specimens.

The four species of flies here described as new belong in the genus Parasyntormon as established by Wheeler in 1899. Curran and Becker, among the more recent writers, have pointed out the very close relationship of Parasyntormon to Syntromon Loew, the latter writer having united the two genera under the name Syntormon.

A new, endemic monotypic genus of Pyrgomorphidae, Xenephias, is described from Socotra. The single known species, X. socotranus n. sp., proves to be a member of the widely distributed tribe Sphenariini. It shows some similarities to eastern Asiatic genera, but is apparently closest to the isolated east African genus Sphenexia Karsch.

The stilbenes 4,4′-diaminostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid, 4-aminostilbene disulfonic acid, and dinitrostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid were tested as enhancers for the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar (L.), nucleopolyhedrovirus (LdNPV). 4-Amino nitrostilbene disulfonic acid had no effect on the activity (LC50) of LdNPV, whereas both 4,4′-diaminostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid and 4-aminostilbene disulfonic acid were inhibitory. Diethylstilbestrol, a stilbene synthetic estrogen, and two synthetic estrogens (i.e., estradiol-17-acetate, estrone acetate) had no effects on viral activity. Two stilbene dyes (i.e., direct yellow 62, brilliant yellow 6) and a stilbene optical brightener (i.e., Tinopal LPW) significantly increased the activity of LdNPV. Activity was increased by approximately 230-fold by Tinopal LPW, 26-fold by direct yellow 62, and 36-fold by brilliant yellow 6. This study demonstrates that some stilbenes can act as enhancers, whereas others do not.