MELOE. 365 
almost impossible to separate them in a satisfactory manner. The cedeagus of the 
male scarcely differs in form in MZ. levis and M. dugesi: the central sheath is furnished 
on the lower side with two long, curved, sharp, compressed teeth directed backwards; 
on the upper side in Mf. levis there is a very short curved tooth (also directed back- 
wards) near the tip, this short tooth being obsolete in M. dugesi. The Mexican and 
Central-American species all have the head and thorax smooth, or, at most, very finely 
and sparsely punctured. | 
* The fifth to the seventh joints of the antenne dilated and distorted in the male, 
stouter than the following joints in tthe female. (ProscaraBaus, Steph.; CNeEsto- 
cERA, Thoms.) 
1. Meloe tropicus. (Tab. XVII. fig. 1, 3.) 
Melve tropicus, Motsch. Etudes Ent. v. p. 32 (1856) *. 
Meloe sculpticornis, Motsch. Bull. Mose. xlv. 2, p. 48 (1878) *. 
Hab. GuatemaLa, Tepan (Conradt), Sabo in Vera Paz (Champion); Nicaracua? 
(Wagner); Costa Rica (Sallé). 
Motschulsky, in the fifth volume of his “ Etudes,” enumerates certain Coleoptera 
found by Wagner in Nicaragua; and amongst them he mentions a Meloe “ voisine par 
la taille, la couleur, et la forme des antennes de I. proscarabeus, mais presque lisse, 
je la nomme WM. tropicus” 1. Long afterwards, he gives some further particulars about 
a male of the same species and names it WM. seulpticornis. He describes? “the head, 
thorax, and abdomen as almost smooth; the elytra very finely rugulose and a little 
longer than the head and thorax united ; the thorax elongate, distinctly angular at the 
sides anteriorly, and with an impressed median line; the colour as deep as in U/. pro- 
scarabeus, but with a greenish reflection ; the intermediate joints of the antenne very 
strongly dilated.” A male Meloe of very large size, from Costa Rica, labelled WM. tro- 
picus, Motsch., in Sallé’s collection, agrees very well with this description ; and I also 
refer two females from Guatemala to the same species. It closely resembles the N.- 
American I. americanus, Leach (the type of which is contained in the British Museum), 
and M. angusticollis, Say, but differs from both these species by the much smoother head, 
thorax, and elytra. The thorax is considerably longer than broad, with the sides 
somewhat angularly dilated anteriorly and sinuate or compressed behind this; it has a 
smooth, more or less impressed median line and a faint depression on either side of it 
on the disc about the middle; the surface bears a few very widely scattered exceedingly 
minute punctures, these being chiefly placed near the anterior margin. The names 
MW. tropicus and M. sculpticornis, Motsch., are omitted by Escherich (Deutsche ent. 
Zeit. 1889, pp. 333-335) in his list of species of Meloe added since the e pubheption of 
the Munich Catalogue. 
