The name I have given should perhaps be written Holchorpa; but I have disregarded the aspirate, as Linné did in constructing Panorpa. Holcorpa maculosa.-A single insect (No. 63), obtained by Mrs. Fisher from the Florissant shales of Colorado, has beautifully preserved wings and fragments of the rest of the body. The antennæ (which are not fully preserved) appear to have been more than half as long as the wings, the middle joints 0.17mm long and 0.14mm broad. The wings are less than three times as long as broad, and very regularly rounded; the costal vein (especially on the front wing) is thickened and covered with closely clustered, minute, spinous hairs; and similar black hairs follow in a single row the base of the radial and cubital veins. The wings are very dark, with large white or pale spots, of which three are most conspicuous, occurring similarly on all the wings: one, of a subquadrate or subovate form, broader than long, lies scarcely beyond the middle of the wing, extending from the costa to the upper branch of the cubital vein; another, nearly as large and similar in form, is subapical, extending from just beyond the last fork of the upper branch of the radial vein to or just beyond the upper fork of the lowest branch of the same; a third, smaller, transversely oval spot, lies next the inner border, below and a little outside the first mentioned, being situated just beneath the forking of the upper branch of the cubital vein; there is also more or less pale cloudiness about the basal half of the wing, and white flecks may be seen at various points near the tip, especially below the subapical spot. The abdomen resembles somewhat that of the remarkable Panorpa nematogaster M'Lachl. from Java, where it is greatly elongated, and possesses a curious appendage to the third joint. In the fossil species, the first three joints, taken together, taper gradually and slightly, and the third may have had a peculiar appendage at its tip, as the edge is not entire, but appears deeply excavated in the middle, possibly due, however, to its imperfect preservation; the basal half of the fourth joint partakes of the tapering of the abdomen, but its apical half is swollen and its hind margin broadly rounded; the fifth and sixth joints are a little longer and much slenderer than the preceding, subequal and cylindrical; the fifth depressed on either side at the base by a pair of fovea; the seventh again much smaller, linear or not half the width of the sixth, increasing slightly in size apically; the eighth as large at base as the seventh at tip, enlarging slightly apically, and all the joints together half as long again as the wings. Most unfortunately, the apical joint is lost. The specimen is evidently a male. Length of insect (excluding claw of abdomen) 30mm, of abdomen (excluding claw) 23mm, of front wing 18mm, breadth of same 5.5mm; length of hind wing 16.5mm, breadth of same 5mm; length of (fore or middle) tibial spurs 1mm, of one of the (hind?) tarsal joints 1.2mm. Indusia calculosa.-In certain parts of Auvergne, France, rocks are found, which, for a thickness of sometimes two meters, are wholly made up of the remains of the cases of caddis-flies. These have been frequently mentioned by writers, and Sir Charles Lyell figures them in his Manual. Oustalet, in his recent treatise on the fossil insects of Auvergne, describes two forms, one from Clermond, and the other from St. Gérand, which he distinguishes under the names Phryganea corentina and P. gerandina, principally from their difference in size and strength, and a distinction in the minute shells-species of Paludina-of which the cases are composed. One of them, however, probably the former, was previously named by Giebel Indusia tabulata, a generic name which it would perhaps be well to employ for the cases of extinct Phryganidæ, until they can reasonably be referred to particular genera. During the past season, Dr. A. C. Peale, in his explorations under the Survey, discovered on the west side of Green River, Wyoming Territory, at the mouth of Lead Creek, in deposits which he considers as probably belonging to the Upper Green River Group, or possibly to the lower part of the Bridger Group beds of limestone, the upper floor of which is completely covered with petrified cases of caddis-flies, all belonging to a single species, which may bear the name we have applied to it above. They vary from 14 to 19mm in length, from 4 to 5mm in diameter at their open anterior extremity, and from 3 to 3.2mm at their posterior end, the thickness of the walls being about 0.75mm. As will be seen by these measurements, the cases are a little larger at their mouth, but otherwise they are cylindrical, taper with perfect regularity, and are straight, not slightly curved, as in many Phryganid cases. They are completely covered with minute, rounded, water-worn pebbles, apparently of quartz, generally subspherical or ovate, and varying from one-third to two-thirds of a millimeter in mean diameter; they thus give the cases a granulated appearance. Nearly all the cases are filled with calcareous material, but some are empty for a short distance from their mouth, and in one case the inner linings of this part of the case has a coating of minuter calcareous particles, evidently deposited therein after the case was vacated. As the present thickness of the walls indicates (as also the size of the attached pebbles), the silken interior lining of the case must have been very stout. This follows also from the appearance of one or two which have been crushed; for they have yielded along longitudinal lines, indicating a parchment-like rigidity in the entire shell. In one of the specimens, the outer coating of heavier pebbles has in some way been removed by weathering, and has left a scabrous surface, apparently produced by minute, hard grains entangled in the fibrous meshes of the web; it still, however, retains its cylindrical form. The size of the case, its form, and the material from which it is constructed seem to indicate that it belonged to some genus of Limnophilidæ near Anabolia. *Bibl. Ecole Haut. Etudes; Sc. Nat. iv, art. 7, pp. 101-102. ART. XXV.-FIELD-NOTES ON BIRDS OBSERVED IN DAKOTA AND MONTANA ALONG THE FORTY-NINTH PARALLEL DURING THE SEASONS OF 1873 AND 1874.*/ BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES, U. S. A. Late Surgeon and Naturalist U. S. Northern Boundary Commission. 86 RAKT The following notes result from observations made in the field during my connection with the United States Northern Boundary CommissionArchibald Campbell, Esq., Commissioner, Major W. J. Twining, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., Chief Astronomer. The line surveyed by the Commission, in 1873 and 1874 extended from the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains, a distance of 850 miles, along the northern border of the Territories of Dakota and Montana, in latitude 49° north. During the season of 1873, I took the field at Pembina, on the Red River, early in June, and in the course of the summer passed along the Line nearly to the Coteau de Missouri, returning from the Souris or Mouse River via Fort Stevenson and the Missouri to Bismarck. This season's operations were entirely on the parallel of 49°, and in the watershed of the Mouse and Red Rivers, my principal collecting-grounds being Pembina, Turtle Mountain, and the Mouse River. This region of the northerly waters is sharply distinguished geographically and topographically, as well as zoologically, from the Missouri and Milk River Basin, which I entered the following year. In 1874, I began at Fort Buford, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, travelled northwesterly to 490, which was reached at Frenchman's River, one of the numerous tributaries of Milk River, and thence along the parallel to the Rocky Mountains at Waterton or Chief Mountain Lake and other headwaters of the Saskatchewan; returning back on the Line to Three Buttes or Sweetgrass Hills, thence direct to Fort Benton, Montana, and thence by a boat voyage down the Missouri to Bismarck. In neither season was much collecting done except along the parallel itself; and the operations of each season were in a region sharply distinguished, as I have said, by its faunal peculiarities. From these two broad belts of country, corresponding at 490 nearly to the Territories of Dakota and Montana respectively, is to be set apart a third, that of the Rocky Mountains alone. I made an elaborate comparison of the faunal characters of these three [*For articles on other portions of the same writer's collection, see this Bulletin, this Vol., No. 1, pp. 259-292, and No. 2, pp. 481-518.—ED.] · Bull. iv. No. 3—1 545 regions with reference to anticipated publication in connection with the official report of the United States Boundary Commission; but the present is hardly the place to present these considerations in detail. I may, however, state that my results agree closely with those derived from the geological investigations made by Mr. George M. Dawson, my colleague of the British contingent of the Survey, whose valuable Report should be consulted in this connection, and that they are in striking accord with what would be the geographer's or the topographer's consideration. 1. Red River region, or watershed of the Red and Mouse Rivers. At 49° this extends westward along the northern border of Dakota, nearly to Montana,-to the point where the Coteau crosses the Line. The birdfauna of this region is decidedly Eastern in character,-much more so than that of the portion of the Missouri Basin which lies south of it and no further west. It is well distinguished, both by this Eastern facies and by the absence of the species which mark the Missouri region. The region consists of more or less (nearly in direct ratio as we pass westward) fertile prairie, treeless except along the streams, cut by the two principal river-valleys, the Red and the Mouse, crossed by the low range of the Pembina Mountains, and marked by the isolated butte known as Turtle Mountain. It is bounded to the west and south by the Coteau,―a comparatively very slight ridge, which nevertheless absolutely separates the two great watersheds. The Red River flows nearly due north; the Mouse River makes a great horseshoe bend, at first directed toward the Missouri, which it almost reaches before it is "bluffed off", literally, and sent northward.* The bird fauna of Pembina and the whole immediate Red River Valley is thoroughly Eastern. The only Western trace I observed was Spizella pallida and some Icterida, especially Scolecophagus cyanocephalus; though Sturnella neglecta and Xanthocephalus icterocepha lus are both common prairie birds much further east, as Pediœcetes columbianus also is. Characteristic mammals are Spermophilus 13-lineatus, S. franklini, Tamias quadrivittatus, Thomomys talpoides, and the rare Onychomys leucogaster. Out on the prairie, beyond the Pembina Mountains, this region is distinguished by the profusion cf several very nota. ble birds,-Anthus spraguii, Plectrophanes ornatus, Passerculus bairdi, and Eremophila leucolæma, all breeding, none of them observed at Pembina. Here also was found Coturniculus lecontii. This treeless area is further marked by the absence of sundry birds common enough in the heavily-timbered Red River Valley, as Empidonaces, Vireones, Antrosto Fort Pembina is situated on the Red River, latitude 49° nearly; longitude 97° 13, 42" west; altitude 790 feet above sea-level. The Pembina Mountains, well wooded, with a maximum elevation of about 1,700 feet, lie 35 miles west of the Red River, forming an escarpment which separates the low immediate valley of the Red River from the next higher prairie steppe, which reaches to the Coteau. Turtle Mountain is an isolated, heavily-wooded butte, 125 miles west of Pembina, with an elevation of about 2,000 feet above sea-level, lying directly on the parallel of 49°. Our camp, at its west base, was in longitude 100° 30′ 41.1", distant 149.25 miles from Pembina along the parallel. |