II STUDIES AMONG SOME OF THE AMERICAN 

 AMARIN^ AND PTEROSTICHIN^ 



The genus Amara, in its comprehensive sense, was held to be 

 merely a member of the Pterostichinae by G. H. Horn, but many 

 systematists believe that, because of certain habital differences 

 and some peculiarities of palpal structure not however without 

 numerous exceptions the genera allied to Amara should be con- 

 sidered separately from the true Pterostichinae and I agree with 

 Mr. Bates in so regarding them. 



Subfamily AMARIN^E 



The small or moderate, oval or oblong species composing this 

 subfamily are very numerous, though much less so than those of 

 the Bembidiinae previously described in this volume, and they are 

 more difficult, or perhaps unsatisfactory from a taxonomic stand- 

 point, owing to a more obvious deficiency in structural peculiarities. 

 They form a fairly isolated group, more closely related to the Pteros- 

 tichinae than to any other of the larger subfamilies, though easily 

 distinguishable as a rule by certain habital features and, as noted 

 by Bates, by the relatively more elongate and more setose penulti- 

 mate joint of the labial palpi, a special character first observed by 

 G. H. Horn, but apparently not utilized by him systematically. 

 As in the case of so many other Carabid groups, the species are 

 peculiarly northern in habitat; they have been treated systematic- 

 ally by LeConte (Proc. Ac. Phila., 1855, 7, p. 346), Horn Tricena 

 and Celia (Tr. Am. Ent. Soc., XIX, 1892, p. 18) and Hayward 

 (1. c., XXXIV, 1908, p. 13). 



In some large sections of our Amarinae the species have scarcely 

 been touched from a descriptive viewpoint, so that there is almost 

 a virgin field for this form of research. It is primarily for this 

 reason that the number of legitimate taxonomic forms which I 

 have been forced to recognize and describe, seems incredibly large, 

 especially in the genus Celia. This very large proportion of new 

 descriptions is not by any means chiefly owing to the undiscrimi- 



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