Early this year a complaint was received from Mr. George A. Cameron of Inverness, Nova Scotia, that black beetles were numerous in the basement of his home. They were crawling into stored milk and meat, as well as into flour bins; in fact, they showed a great liking for places difficult of access. On occasions they appeared in other rooms of the house, even dropping down into the shades of lighting fixtures. Similar trouble had been experienced the previous year. No actual damage was reported aside from waste when the presence of beetles necessitated the discarding of food stuffs.

McDunnough (1938, pp. 32-33) has raised the question of the validity of Iron fraudator Trar. A specimen sent to him by Dr. Traver as the true pleuralis was treated with caustic potash and mounted in balsam. This “proved……..identical with a genitalic slide made from a male paratype of fraudator, Trav.……..Other slides of similarly distorted material……..gave similar results.” Spieth (1938, pp. 7-11) has also questioned the validity of I. fraudator, giving additional evidence that this species is, in reality, a stage of I. pleuralis in which the penes have become expanded.

Two new species of Ixodes are described herewith. Both have been recognized for the past ten years as differing in certain respects from known species. Published descriptions of them, however, have been withheld pending a fuller knowledge of their distribution and further studies on the stability or certain differences between them and allied species. The acquisition of further study material having shown that differences are constant, the writer now feels justified in erecting two new species, thus differentiating these ticks from allied species with which they have been confused.

Aeschna verticalis Hagen has been for some years the only species of the genus from eastern North America, whose nymph was unknown, except the rare A. mutata Hagen. At last, unexpectedly, the writer found A. verticalis in transformation at Clementsport, Annapolis Co., Nova Scotia.

Four species of the Genus Grammotaulius, one of which is now considered a synonym, have been recognized in North America. These have been recorded only from Greenland, Canada, and northwestern United States. In August, 1940, Dr. C. E. Mickel and Mr. H. E. Milliron collected a series including both sexes of a new species in Colorado.