ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. . [June, '03 The Coleoptera of the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. BY W. KNAUS, McPherson, Kansas. The writer spent a week in June, 1902, in the Sacramento Mountains of southeast New Mexico, and collected Coleoptera from an elevation of forty-five hundred feet at Alamogordo, to nine thousand feet at Cloudcroft on the summit. Alamogordo, on the western foot hills of the mountains, is eighty-seven miles northeast of El Paso, Texas. Until 1902 these mountains could only be reached by rail over a branch road from El Paso. In the spring of 1902 the Rock Island El Paso line was opened for traffic and access to this range of mountains became easy. My first day's collecting was up L,a L/uz and Fresnal Canons ; from L,a L/uz, at an elevation of forty-seven hundred feet to Highrolls, at an elevation of six thousand five hundred ; my last da>-was on the fourteenth of June at Cloudcroft on the summit. The intermediate days were spent in the upper canons that have their .beginning in the vicinity of Cloudcroft, the elevations being from seven thousand to nine thousand feet. The lower L,a L,uz and Fresnal canons contain little or no timber ; what little is seen is the cottonwood and the quaking asp. The vegetation is semi-desert in character, thick fleshy leaves covered everywhere with spines. As the elevation in-creases pines and spruces begin to appear, and the semi-desert flora begins to change. At Toboggan, at an elevation of eight thousand feet, the flora has entirely changed owing to an abundant precipitation of moisture. The mountain sides are covered with pine and spruce forests which increase in density as the summit is reached. The canon sides and summit are covered thickly in places with a growth of shrubs and scrubby oaks, known locally as " shin oaks," and afford excellent col-lecting grounds for the entomologist. At the higher elevations many species of Coleoptera occur which are found in northern New Mexico and southern Colo-rado ; while the lower elevations show species peculiar to the semi-desert or arid fauna. As my collecting was done the second week in June, before
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