Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/273

Rh Pacific coast. Three species occur in California, of which two are common and constantly met with. One (Termopsis augusticollis) is unusually large, and makes its communal nests in fallen pine-trees, telegraph and telephone poles and other dry wood. I have found colonies containing thousands of individuals in fallen trunks of the great trees of the Sierran forest.

Another group of interesting insects unusually well represented in California are the gall-flies (Synipidæ) which form the galls, or, better, stimulate the trees to form the galls, on oaks. Seventy species of these odd little flies have been listed for the state, and there are others in Oregon and Washington, As each species has its own special kind of gall, the oak-trees of the Pacific coast often bear a curiously variable load of "fruit" besides the acorns.

I should like to speak of some of the west-coast insects of unusual appearance or pattern, the kind that catch the eye of the most casual traveler, such as the giant, tarantula-killing, bronze-winged, blue-black Pepsis wasp, that indulges in battles-royal with the big hairy tarantulas and trap-door spiders, which themselves, though not insects, are near enough related to them to warrant mention in any account of our insect fauna. But I may not. I may not speak for them at all except to say that California will match its insects against the similar fauna of any other state for interest and opportunity for fascinating observation and profitable study.