The current rapid advance in many fields of biology is being facilitated by the discovery of new ‘tools’ or the extended application of old ‘tools’. Radioactive isotopes, paper chromatography, the electron microscope and cytogenetics are but a few examples. Entomology is benefiting by the use of these tools. Recently the serological reaction known as the precipitin test is being more frequently applied in numerous biological studies. It is the purpose of this paper to point out the uses of the precipitin test in Entomology.

Head: Black, sometimes reddish on the lower facial and parafacial areas. Pollen silvery, but with distinct pale-yellow cast on parafrontal, parafacial, occipital orbit, and anterior part of gena. Frontals 9-11, moderately divergent below, reaching middle of sccond antennal segment. Two or 3 hair-like interfrontals on upper part. Ocellars moderate. Preverticals strong. Outer verticals hair-like. Orbitals nil. Parafacial hairs irregularly scattered, a little stronger below, but not bristly. Occipital fringe of black bristles and hairs, a few of the latter arising in the intrapostocular area (occipital orbit). Behind the fringe an irregular second and sometimes a partial third row of black hairs. Beard white, extending a little in front of metacephalic suture. Front ¼ head width, (average of 5 specimens, 0.256). Gena ⅓ eve height. Antenna ⅔ length of face, black, apex of first and second and base of third segments reddish. Second segment ½ length of third. Arista moderately plumose on basal ⅗ Palpi and proboscis black.

The search for compounds effective in the immunization of crop plants from insects or fungi has been prolonged and, with few exceptions, unsuccessful. It was not until the early 1940's that Kukenthal, in the routine testing of the biological activities of new compounds prepared by the I. G. Farbenindustrie A. G., observed that certain fluorine and phosphorus compounds synthesized by Schrader (1917), had this property and were described by Schrader as suitable for the “internal therapy” of plants. Because of the accepted application of the term therapeutant by Cunningham (1935) to toxicants in general, Shaw and the writer (1947) borrowed the term systemic (meaning that the plant as a whole is affected) to differentiate this type of action from the localized effect of previously known insecticides.

On July 12, 1950 a collection of adults of the moth Acentropus niveus (Oliv.) was made on the north shore of Lake Erie near the village of South Cayuga, Ontario (Maps A, B-3). At the southern limits of the townships of Dunn and South Cayuga (Haldimand County) a shallow bay extends for a distance of about two miles along the shore of the lake (Map A). Along this bay is a sandy or gravelly beach ten to twenty yards wide backed by a cliff of clay that rises abruptly above the beach. On the day the collections were made the sky was clear and a brisk southerly breeze was causing waves to wash on the beach. The action of the waves had deposited debris, consisting largely of tangled masses of a filamentous green alga and exuviae of the mayfly Hexagenia occulta, in a windrow six inches to two feet wide along the shore. The moths ere found in this debris, most of them lying dead and with bedraggled wings, while some lay on their backs with wings stuck to the damp surface and with legs kicking and a few were crawling about on the debris.

In 1862 H. C. Wood described a new centipede, Mecistocephalus fulvus, which he found “not very abundantly” in the vicinity of Philadelphia. To my knowledge no subsequent worker has ever attempted to refer a centipede to this species, nor has fulvus ever been considered a synonym of any other species, so that for eighty-eight years it has been regarded privately or in print as being incertae sedis.

The confusion surrounding this species has been due primarily to the following considerations: it has never been taken by anyone other than its author; the type is missing; it was highly improbable that this species could be referred to Mecistocephalidae, or even to Mecistocephalus, a genus represented in the eastern United States by a single imported species; and the original description itself refers to a centipede not quite like anything else known to occur in the east.