Phytophagous orchard mites have become so troublesome in British Columhia during the last decade that special attention has been given to studies on their ecology and control. An important prerequisite for such studies is an accurate and rapid method of estimating population densities of both the mites and their predators. As some mites are less than a fifth of a millimetre long, it is difficult to determine the numbers of adults present on foliage, quite apart from the eggs and other immature stages.

Methods for estimating orchard mite populations developed to date may be classified as either direct, in which the mites are counted on the leaves or estimated, or indirect, in which the mites are removed from the leaves and a known fraction is counted.

The appearance of an article “Window flight traps for insects” by Chapman and Kinghorn (Can. Ent. 87 (1): 46-47. 1955) suggests that it may be well to describe another flight trap. Specimens taken by it have been labelled “caught in cheesecloth trap”, a statement which is true but perhaps enigmatic.

While on the late Ralph Hopping's staff, the writer built a number of cages for rearing forest insects in southern British Columbia. These cages were all 6 × 6 × 6 ft., each on a cloth covered wooden platform, with a minimum super-structure of 2 × 2 in. lumber to the inside of which cheesecloth was tacked to form an insect-tight enclosure. One entered by a door on the lower part of the north or east side.

Pineus pinifoliue (Fitch) was first described (6) in 1858 under the name Chermes pinifoliae. His description of the adult gallicola migrans on the needles of white pine contained characteristic phases of the form sufficient to distinguish it from other Adeiginae. Thomas (13), in 1879, described the characteristic cone-like gall on spruce and named the species forming the gall Chermes abieticolens. In 1906 Patch (12) observed the migration of the gallicola migrans from galls on black spruce, Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P., to the needies of white pine, Pinus strobus L., thus proving that Chermes abieticolens Thomas was a synonym of Chermes pinifoliae Fitch. She described the nymph and adult of the gallicola migrans and sexupara and included a drawing of the adult gallicola migrans. In 1928 Annand (I) revised the Adelginae and placed the species in the genus Pineus. He described and figured the fundatris, gallicola migrans, and exsulis.

The red clover thrips, Haplothrips niger (Osb.), was first recorded from the state of Iowa and described by Osborn in 1883 under the name Phloeothrips nigra. The species hns since been collected and observed in many parts of the United States, southern Canada, and Europe. It wils reported in New England and recognized as a potential pest of red clover by Muggeridge (1933). Minute and very active, the adult insect is glossy black in contrast to the nymphal stages, which are bright red. In Minnesota, common host plants are alsike clover, Trifolium hybridum L., and red clover, T. pratense L.

Craighead (1923) described the larvae of four North American species of Acunthocinus and constructed a key for their separation; two of these, A. nodosus (Fab.) and A. obsoletus (Oliv.), occur in the eastern half of the continent. During recent studies of cerambycids infesting fire-killed pine in central Ontario, another species, A. pusillus Kby., was encountered in large numbers, but the larvae could not be identified because of the lack of a published larval description. Larvae were eventually reared from known parent adults, and, since wood-boring Coleoptera are most frequently encountered in immature stages, the following description has been prepared.

In 1913 Horace Gunthorp published his master's thesis, an annotated roster of the virtually unknown myriapod fauna of Kansas. At that time he reported the presence in the state of fourteen millipede and fifteen centipede species and so endeavoured to augment the pioneer work previously undertaken by F. W. Cragin in 1885.

Among the fifteen chilopods recorded in the 1913 paper were three new species, Geophilus dolichocephalus, Arenophilus osborni, and Lithobius kansensis–all names which have gone nearlv unnoticed in subsequent publications dealing with the North American fauna.

Considerable confusion exists concerning the identification of larvae of the genus Anoplonyx in North America. Larvae of two species collected in Eastern Canada have been generally identified as one species, A. laricis (Martatt). A published larval description of the other species, A. canadensis Harrington, is not available. Keen's (1938) published descriptions of the western species (A. occidens Ross and A. laricivorus Rohwer and Middleton) apparently had the wrong association between larvae and adults. This study was undertaken to provide more detailed larval descriptions of nearctic species of Anoplonyx as listed by Ross (1951).