biguttatus_ as Arizona, Texas, Panama, Pará, Cuba, Louisiana, West Virginia, and California. After a careful study of the material in the United States National Museum, Mr. Heidemann has decided that the specimens of _Rasatus_ from the southeastern part of the country are in reality Say's _R. biguttatus_, while those from the Southwestern States belong to a distinct species answering more fully, with slight exceptions, to the description of Stal's _Rasatus thoracicus_. The writer has recently received a large series of _R. thoracicus_ from Mr. H. Brown, of Tucson, Arizona, and had a disagreeable experience with the same species in April, 1898, at San José de Guaymas, in the State of Sonora, Mexico. He had not seen the insect alive before, and was sitting at the supper table with his host--a ranchero of cosmopolitan language. One of the bugs, attracted by the light, flew in with a buzz and flopped down on the table. The writer's entomological instinct led him to reach out for it, and was warned by his host in the remarkable sentence comprising words derived from three distinct languages: "Guardez, guardez! Zat animalito sting like ze dev!" But it was too late; the writer had been stung on the forefinger, with painful results. Fortunately, however, the insect's beak must have been clean, and no great swelling or long inconvenience ensued. Perhaps the best known of any of the species mentioned in our list is the blood-sucking cone-nose (_Conorhinus sanguisugus_). This ferocious insect belongs to a genus which has several representatives in the United States, all, however, confined to the South or West. _C. rubro-fasciatus_ and _C. variegatus_, as well as _C. sanguisugus_, are given the general geographical distribution of "Southern States." _C. dimidiatus_ and _C. maculipennis_ are Mexican forms, while _C. gerstaeckeri_ occurs in the Western States. The more recently described species, _C. protractus_ Uhl., has been taken at Los Angeles, Cal.; Dragoon, Ariz.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. All of these insects are blood-suckers, and do not hesitate to attack animals. Le Conte, in his original description of _C. sanguisugus_,[5] adds a most significant paragraph or two which, as it has not been quoted of late, will be especially appropriate here: "This insect, equally with the former" (see above), "inflicts a most painful wound. It is remarkable also for sucking the blood of mammals, particularly of children. I have known its bite followed by very serious consequences, the patient not recovering from its effects for nearly a year. The many relations which we have of spider bites frequently proving fatal have no doubt arisen from the stings of these insects or others of the same genera. When the disease called spider bite is not an anthrax or carbuncle it is undoubtedly occasioned by the bite of an insect--by no means however, of a spider. Among the many species of _Araneidæ_ which we have in the