60 MALACODERMATA. 
ances described by travellers on the Pacific railway, in passing damp savannas, as 
“showers of light ” are to be attributed. 
In a species of such wide range a good deal of allowance must be made for variation ; 
and among the great number of specimens which I have examined there are several 
tolerably well-marked forms, mainly differing in the amount of pigment in the body 
and elytra. The varieties 6 and ¢ are more robustly built than others, and do not seem 
to occur in the colder regions. 
10. Photuris fruticola, 
Photuris fruticola (Eschscholtz), Mots. Etud. Ent. iii. p. 60. 
Photuris trivialis, Bohem. Res. Eugen. p. 77 (1858). 
Hab. Mexico, Cordova (Sallé); Guatemata, Aceytuno, (Salvin), Zapote, Sinanja 
valley, Senahu, Sabo, Purula (Champion).—Sovrn America, Brazil, Monte Video. 
Var. a. Elytris vitta ab humero ad apicem fere producta, pallida. 
Hab. GuatemMaua, Cerro Zunil, Las Mercedes, San Gerénimo, Zapote. 
Var. 3. Capite testaceo, corpore paulo minore. 
Hab. Mxxico, Cordova (Sailé). 
Head black, or slightly tinged with pitchy upon the crown ; thorax pale horny yellow, 
rather shining, very rarely darker on the disk, scarcely punctured ; elytra dark fuscous, 
with the suture and lateral margin pale, clothed with a fine yellow pubescence ; 
scutellum yellow; coxe, trochanters, and thighs (excepting their apices) pale testaceous, 
the remainder of the legs dark. Breast and first four segments of the abdomen dark 
fuscous, the apex of the third, and often nearly the whole of the fourth, are pale; in 
the male the fifth and six plates are long and eburated, with their margins widely 
emarginate in an angular manner. The seventh plate in the male has a lanceolate 
lobe, covering entirely the genital eighth plate, and is always pale. ‘The antenne and 
palpi are dark. In fine specimens the underside of the bilobed fourth joint of the tarsi 
is golden-haired. 
The variety 3, with the head yellow, is scarcely different from P. frontalis, Leconte, 
which occurs in Texas. The thorax, however, is not coarsely punctate, as in my examples 
of that species. At present I have only seen one example with a dark disk to the 
thorax, which is from Sabo. 
In colour this species is very like Lucidota osculati and L. limbata. 
Photuris brunnipennis, Jacq. Duval (in Sagra’s Hist. Cuba, vil. p. 39; Gorh. Trans. 
Ent. Soc. 1880, p. 111), may be only a variety of the same. 
