Animals are capable of multiplying their numbers by some form of reproduction; but they are hindered by natural means from multiplying to the point of committing collective suicide by exhausting the resources of this planet. Animals are also subject to having their numbers decreased; but, likewise, their decrease to extinction is hindered by natural means. The question of these natural means of limiting increase and decrease of numbers is a fundamental problem of Ecology: the problem of the mechanism of natural control of populations. The solution of this problem has, of course, great practical interest because man suffers from some animals being too few (beneficial species) and others too numerous (pests).

On the warm morning of May 27, 1956 at the Trinity Valley field station near Lumby, B.C., some laundry hanging out to dry attracted large numbers of a strange Cerambycid-like beetle. Closer examination showed this insect to be Priacma serrata (Lec.) of the family Cupesidae (Fig. 1), an interesting and infrequently collected species.

The family Cupesidae seems to have no economic importance, having only two genera and five species in North America that have been described (Blatchley, 1910). The larvae are reported to live in rotten wood; dissection of some adults collected at this time produced an entirely empty and deflated gut. The females and larvae of the closely related Micromalthus debilis Lec. are found in rotting wood in North America and were reported from decaying mine timbers far under ground in Johannesburg.

Discrepancies in the degree of biological control of insect pests where the food plant species of the host were the only known variants in the environment have been subjects of scattered observations in the literature by Morgan (1910), Compere (1936), Gilmore (I938), and others.

A long period of speculation on the existence of strains of California red scale, Aonidiella aurantii (Mask.) immune to attack by parasites culminated in the discovery by Flanders (1939a, 1942a) that the hymenopterous parasite Habrolepis rouxi comp. reproduced satisfactorily on A. aurantii on Citrus spp. but that verv few emerged from the same species of scale on sago palm, Cycas revoluta Thunb. This was considered to be the reason for Compere's early failure to bring the hymenopterous parasite, Comperiella bifasciata How, from the Orient to California on scale-infested sago palm; Smith (1942) concluded: “Recognition must be given to the possibility that the host plant may confer on the host insect a kind of immunity to parasitization”.

The most important factor affecting the densities of pollinating species of bees on alfalfa seed fields in southern Alberta is competing flowering growth (Hobbs and Lilly, 1954, 1955). This is a report on the relative attractiveness of red clover and alfalfa to honey, bumble, and leaf-cutter bees in southern Alberta. Observations were made on the first crops grown in each of two newly cultivated and irrigated areas near Hays; the fields were isolated from all other entomophilous crops by at least five miles of virgin prairie. A third series of observations was made on crops grown in the isolated river valley near Lethbridge previously described by Hobbs and Lilly (1955).

The Byron Bog is a sphagnum bog situated about three miles west of London and one mile northeast of Byron, Ontario in a depression adjacent to the southwest corner of Oxford Street and Hyde Park Sideroad in London Township of Middlesex County (Fig. 1). During the past it has been variously designated as “The Spruce Swamp”, “Foster's Bog” and “Redmond's (sometimes erroneously spelled “Redman's”) Swamp” or “Redmonds' Bog” Woolverton (1900) described it briefly in an account of a trip to the bog by members of the Geological Section of the Entomological Society of Ontario in 1899: “A number of the members of the section visited a peat bed, situated 3 miles west of London at Redmond's farm. It lies in a low spot bordered by high hills on the east and north. Towards the south a barrier not more than a few feet in height isolates it from the River Thames. In the centre is a pond of clear spring water over 60 feet in depth…” The bog has attracted the attention of local naturalists, particularly members of the McIlwraith Ornithological Club of London, who have studied various features of its fauna and flora, e.g. Dearness (19071, Judd (1956a), Saunders (1932) and Saunders and Dale (1933).