66 north). The inhabitants were filled with great fear when they heard that a race of fierce men who rode horses (never having seen such animals before) had captured Cibola (ancient Zuni). They, however, made some show of resistance to the invaders in their approach to their towns, but the Spaniards charging upon them with vigor, many were killed, when the remainder fled to the houses and sued for peace, offering as an inducement presents of cotton stuffs, tanned hides, flour, pine nuts, maize, native fowls, and some turquoises."1 Resulting from this visit of the conquerors, the Moquis or Moquinas were afterwards converted by the zeal of the Franciscans, but in the year 1680 they apostatized, and after massacring their instructors revolted, together with other Indians of the territory then included in New Mexico. At that time they drove out the Spaniards from their towns, and no attempt, since that event, has been made to reduce them again to submission. In the latter part of the last century, about the year 1799, Don Jose Cortez wrote of them: "The Moquinos are the most industrious of the many Indian nations that inhabit and have been discovered in that portion of America. They till the earth with great care, and apply to all their fields the manures proper for each crop. They are attentive to their kitchen gardens, and have all the varieties of fruit-bearing trees it has been in their power to procure. The peach-tree yields abundantly. The coarse clothing worn by them they make in their looms. . . . The town is governed by a cacique, and for the defense of it the inhabitants make common cause. The people are of a lighter complexion than other Indians. . . The women dress in a woven tunic without sleeves, and in a black, white, or colored shawl, formed like a mantilla. The tunic is confined by a sash, that is usually of many tints. . . The aged women wear the hair divided into two braids, and the young in a knot over each ear." ... Although the foregoing descriptions were written more than three quarters of a century ago, they apply to the tribe, in every detail, at the present time. During our visit to these strange and isolated people in the summer of 1875, I was struck with the accuracy of some of the early Spanish writers in their quaint accounts which I had previously read. The names of the seven towns are subject to shades of variation in pronunciation at different times, because the tribe, possesses no written language by which they might be permanently recorded; yet it is a curious 1 See Essay by Col. J. H. Simpson, Smithsonian Report, 1869.2 fact that we can recognize the majority of these almost unpronounceable names in the most ancient Spanish chronicles. For the purpose of comparison I append the following lists as given by different authors at various periods: - As given in the third volume of Pacific R. R. Reports by Lieut. A. W. Whipple, of the Corps of United States Topographical Engineers, in the year 1854:1O-rail-be. Shu-muth'-pa Ah-le'-lah. Mu-shai'-i-na. Gual'-pi. As collected by the photographic division of the United States Geological Survey, which visited Moqui in the year 1875:3 O-rai'-bi. Mo'-qui or Gual'-pi. Si-chum'-a-vi. Te'-qua (pronounced Tay'-wah). Mr. Wm. H. Jackson, the photographer of the United States Geological Survey, returned to the Moqui pueblos during the spring of the present year (1877), and while there, an actual census was taken with the following results: O-ray'-bi : On an examination of these figures we shall perceive that the percentage of males is larger than that of females, and this fact may be accounted for by the unadventurous and pacific character of the men. They are therefore less liable to accident than the males of other tribes, and consequently the two sexes of this tribe retain to a greater extent their normal ratio. Polygamy, therefore, is rare among them, and polyandry is unknown. 1 Mr. Leroux, about the year 1853, estimated the Moquis at 6720 population. 2 About the year 1870 Mr. Beadle gave the population of the seven towns at 3000. 3 The tribe in 1875 numbered between 1500 and 2000 souls. If we allow, out of the nine hundred and thirty-two adults, the large proportion two hundred and sixty to be unmarried, we will have an average result of only two children in every family. The mortality of the race being much greater than the increase in population (being about equally divided between the two sexes) the Moquis are rapidly passing away. In the last quarter of a century there has been a decrease of five thousand in their entire number. After the lapse of the next score or so of years the race will most probably have become extinct. IN HUNTING AMBLYCHILA.1 BY PROFESSOR F. H. SNOW. N considering the unintelligibility of the title of this paper to one who is not a professional entomologist, I am reminded of a brief dialogue which occurred between Mr. Foster, a member of my last summer's collecting party, and a cow-boy of the plains, who passed by one evening while Mr. Foster was looking for specimens. After watching him for some moments with great curiosity, the cow-boy asked: "What you doing?" Mr. Foster replied: "Hunting Amblychila." The cow-boy, bewildered, inquired again: "Ambly Cheila, who 's she?" "Who she is " it will be the object of this paper in some measure to explain. In 1823 the famous entomologist Thomas Say discovered a single dead specimen of this insect "near the base of the Rocky Mountains." Twenty-nine years later a second specimen, also dead, was found by one of the United States surveying expeditions. The remarkable structure and extreme rarity of this beetle made it "facile princeps" among American insects, and its possession was eagerly desired and earnestly sought by our foremost entomologists. But many difficulties lay in the pathway of those who would gain the coveted prize. The regions in which the two specimens had been captured were practically inaccessible to the entomologist. No railroad had then entered the vast country west of the Missouri River, and hostile bands of Indians were at all times in readiness to massacre the reckless adventurers who should dare to traverse their hunting-grounds without a powerful military escort. A national expedition for Read at the annual meeting of the Kansas Academy of Science, October 12, 1877, by Professor F. H. Snow, of the Kansas University. the survey of our immense unoccupied domains might obtain the needed protection by government authority. But what professional "bug-hunter" could hope for membership of such an expedition, much less aspire to the requisite military escort for an expedition of his own for the sole purpose of hunting an insect, however rare and however valuable in the estimation of entomologists? But notwithstanding the inaccessibility of the plains to collectors of insects, several attempts were made to overcome this difficulty. A distinguished American entomologist, not many years after the discovery of the second specimen of Amblychila in 1852, issued a circular containing a description and life-size figure of the beetle, and distributed it among the army surgeons at the various military posts in the Western Territories. Several additional specimens were in this way obtained, and several others were brought in by some of the more recent government expeditions. But Amblychila cylindriformis continued to be the rarest and the costliest of American Coleoptera. It could hardly be purchased for museums at any price, and not more than two years ago no less than fifteen and twenty dollars were eagerly paid for a single specimen. Indeed, a price-list of North American Coleoptera, issued at Cambridge only eight months ago, quotes the subject of this paper at twelve dollars per specimen. Two causes, however, have recently conspired to bring out the fact that this insect is by no means the same rarity in nature as in entomological collections. In the first place the removal of the Indian tribes from Kansas soil to distant reservations has made it possible for the collector of insects to visit the plains without incurring the imminent danger of losing his scalp; and in the second place the discovery of the crepuscular and nocturnal habits of Amblychila has led to the capture of great numbers of specimens during the past season. This discovery, which had been predicted by Dr. Le Conte, was actually made in the summer of 1876 by Messrs. H. A. Brous and S. W. Williston of the Yale College Geological Expedition to Western Kansas, in charge of Professor B. F. Mudge. The members of this party obtained about one hundred specimens. During the present season several hundred specimens have been taken by Messrs. Williston and Cooper of the Yale Expedition, and by the Kansas University Expedition in charge of the writer. It is more than probable that the present year has been unusually favorable to the occurrence of this insect, and that subsequent seasons may prove, like the season of 1876, less productive of specimens. It is a well-known fact that a species may occur in abundance for a single year and then become comparatively rare or altogether unknown for several years in succession. This law will doubtless be found to apply to Amblychila as well as to other insects. I was disappointed to find this insect apparently devoid of that intensely ferocious nature which had been ascribed to it by sensational writers for the Eastern press, and which would be suggested by its position at the head of a ravenous family of beetles, the Cicindelide or tiger-beetles. I have watched these insects night after night coming forth from their hiding-places soon after sundown and beginning their night-long search for food. I am satisfied that their sense of sight must be exceedingly deficient, as they never discover their prey from a distance, however slight, and never capture it unless stumbling upon it as if by accident. When, however, they do thus stumble upon an unfortunate caterpillar, grasshopper, or other suitable article of food, a very acute sense of touch, chiefly concentrated in their long and constantly vibrating antennæ, enables them to seize upon and firmly hold it with their powerful, strongly-toothed mandibles, while with their maxillæ or secondary jaws they withdraw the life-juices and soft tissues of their struggling victim. They also manifest the imperfection of their vision by making no attempt to escape from their human captors, allowing themselves to be picked up as if entirely blind. They are slow in their movements, walking about with great deliberation over their favorite hunting-grounds, the sloping clay banks. The only approach to rapidity of motion observed during the summer was in the case of a single individual suddenly surprised by the morning sun while at a distance from a suitable hiding-place, which he was making frantic exertions to discover. In a brief article contributed to this Academy at our last annual meeting it was stated by Mr. Brous that these insects "live in holes generally made by themselves." My own observations do not corroborate this statement. On the other hand I found them invariably coming forth at night from holes made by other animals, — most especially from the intricately winding burrows of the kangaroo rat (Dipodomys Philippii), by which the clay banks are often completely honeycombed. In these burrows they take refuge from the direct rays of the sun in the day-time, in company with other nocturnal genera, Eleodes, Pasimachus, |