That, my friends, completes the serious part of what I came all the way from New York to say. Our ignorance concerning insects does not depress me because I feel certain that we shall learn. The insect menace does not frighten me because I believe that we can overcome it if we stop our calamity howling and get dorvn to constructive fundamental rvork. In what follows I invite you to join with me in some of the excursions of a museum man who has had the curious Museum experience of having had charge for more than twenty years of a large taxonomic collection without ever describing a new species or changing the name of an old one.

In the “Canadian Entomologist” for March, 1930 (pp. 54-62) I commented on the Ephenteroptera collected in 1929 by W. J. Brown at various points along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Further studies by Mr. Brown in 1930 at Thunder River (June 12-28 and Aug. 15-29) and at Bradore Bay (July 4-16 and July 29-Aug. 12) have resulted in a number of additional records which I present in the following paper.

General ground color semihyaline to white, marked with orange. Vertex with semblance of five white spots more or less surrounded with orange bands. Median white spot usually elongated and with very thin median orange line. Pronotum with median elongated spot often touuching posterior margin, usual angular spot back of each eye.

The purpose of this paper is to present what is known at the present time concerning the life histories and habits of the Mesoveliidae, particularly those of three species of the genus Mesovelia Muls. found in North America. Studies on our most common species, Mesovelia mulsanti bisignata Uhler, were carried out in Michigan and Kansas, while biological notes on the other two species were taken in the region of Douglas Lake, Michigan, their only known habitat. Isolated rearings and life history studies of all three species were made at Lawrence, Kansas.