HARPALIN^: 57 



It is often difficult to distinguish the male from the female, but 

 in the latter the hind tarsi seem to be a little more slender, with the 

 fourth joint more elongate than in the male. I should have been 

 disposed to consider valens as identical with the Amara? grossa of 

 Say, the size and general characters being similar, were it not for 

 some irreconcilable statements in the description of that species, 

 which was founded upon a single headless individual. Say states 

 that the dorsal line of the prothorax is almost obsolete in grossa, 

 the basal margin "somewhat rough" and "elytra with a sinus 

 near the tip." The medial pronotal stria is rather deeply impressed 

 and the surface basally and apically strewn with very distinct and 

 clearly isolated punctures in all the known species, but the language 

 in reference to the elytral sinus could not by any seeming possibility 

 apply to any species described above, the sinus being obsolete and 

 traceable as a feebly straightened part of the edge only under very 

 careful observation. It may of course be possible that the language 

 of Say is inaccurate and misleading and that valens is really Amara 

 grossa Say, as thought by Blatchley, but I do not feel warranted in 

 making any such definite identification under the circumstances. 



Cratacanthus Dej. 



It is rather remarkable to find in a group characterized generally 

 by a completely edentate mentum, a genus in which the mentum 

 is not only dentate but to such an extreme degree as in Cratacanthus, 

 the tooth being very acute and extending to the transverse line 

 limiting the mentum anteriorly. The body is nearly as in Crato- 

 gnathus in its general form, shining surface and freedom from sculp- 

 ture, but here it is generally stouter in outline. The head is rather 

 large, sometimes very large, the eyes moderate, the antennae rather 

 stout but less so than in Daptus and the third joint is only a little 

 longer than the second or fourth, the frontal impressions small and 

 punctiform. The ligula is rather narrow, parallel, not enlarged 

 at apex, free and exactly equal in length to the paraglossae, which 

 are very thick, pale, with triangular cross-section apically and 

 obliquely ciliate externally at tip. The prosternal process is un- 

 usually broad and but very little constricted by the coxae. The 

 prothorax is cordiform, transverse, with sharply marked right and 

 sometimes acute and slightly everted basal angles, the base strongly 



