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144 Mather: Book Notice Vol. 21, no. 2
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Lepidoptera and that only three are butterflies. Twenty-one families of moths are represented: there are 12 of the noctuids and the pyralids; 9 tortricids; 4 each of gelechiids and aegeriids; 3 liparids and 3 tineids; 2 each sphingids, lasiocampids, geometrids, limacodids; and only one each of the remaining: arctiid, dioptid, megalopygid, cossid, plutellid, yponomeutid, coleophorid, gracillariid, and psychid. However, in the case of the Dioptidae, 100% of the species recorded from the United States and Canada fall into the pest category.—Bryant Mather, Jackson, Mississippi.
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Book Notice
INDEX LITTERATURAE ENTOMOLOGICAE, Serie II, vol. II/F-L/. By W. Derksen and U. Sheiding-Gollner. 678 pp. Published by the German Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Price 55,-MDN. 1966 [,,1965"].
The "Index" contains all entomological papers published in the period of 1864-1900. The second volume includes the authors' names in alphabetical sequence from Fabani to Lyttkens. For more important authors general biographical dates are given. This monumental work will contain four volumes with the "Authors index" and one with the "General index." Both volumes, edited by the German Entomological Institute, have 1375 pages. Review of the first volume see: Jour. Lepid. Soc, 19:62, 1965. The "Index" is very important for all students in entomology, especially in taxonomy, faunistics, zoogeography a.o.—Josef Moucha, National Museum Prague, Praha 1-Czechoslovaks
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THE LARVAE OF CELERIO LINEATA AS FOOD FOR INDIANS1
While reading the letters written by William Greenwood Wright to Herman Strecker of Reading, Pennsylvania, I came across one dated July 10, 1882, from San Bernardino, California, that interested and amused me. The pertinent part of the letter reads:
"The digger indians eat the larvae as a delicacy, when they are plenty. They are desert larvae, I guess native to Arizona or South as Mexico or Lower Cal. They live best in the hot sandy deserts where it is roasting hot & never a drop of water to drink. When botanizing, years ago, I have seen the larvae in incredible numbers great, horrid things, feeding on the abronia (The abronia greatly resembles in habit & in flower, the common garden Verbenas.) & tribes of indians going after them like people after huckleberries. They seize a large larva, pull off its head & giving the carcass a jerk, throw out the viscera and then string the empty body on strings & hang them about their necks still wriggling; or else throw the carcass into a basket or bag to take them home where they hold a feast of several days & the indians come from 100 miles on foot to where the worms are found, to participate in the feast, & to carry home bags full of the dried larvae as stock for future soups. All of which I have seen & know to be true, though incredible."
Wright took a few of the larvae home and raised them. They proved to be Celerio lineata (Fabr.), a Sphingid that is abundant throughout the desert and other parts of the Southwest as well as elsewhere. The above quotation is just as Wright wrote it. The letter is one of many from Wright to Strecker in the files of the Department of Entomology at the Field Museum in Chicago.—F. Martin Brown, Fountain Valley School, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1 This note is a by-product of N.S.F. Grant GS-969 to preserve the Strecker papers.
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