134 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



in his opinion there is little to be wondered at in the length of 

 the egg-chain. The moth might readily balance itself upon the 

 spines and drop the string of eggs until the lowest one touched 

 and adhered to the epidermis of the pad. 



Mr. Hubbard stated that the spines of those varieties of the 

 plant which are most frequently attacked are from 8mm. to 1 2 mm. 

 in length. 



Mr. Schwarz presented a paper entitled : 



SOME NOTES ON MELSHEIMER'S CATALOGUE OF THE 

 COLEOPTERA OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



By E. A. SCH\VARZ. 



The quaint little book published in 1806 by the Rev. Fred. Val. 

 Melsheimer as the first part of an intended general catalogue of the 

 insects of North America is now very rare, and not more than 

 three or four copies are known to exist in the United States. It 

 is briefly referred to at various times both in European and Ameri 

 can literature, and a longer notice of it has been published by Dr. 

 Hagen in his fascinating article on the Melsheimer family and the 

 Melsheimer collection (Can. Ent. 16, 1884, p. 192). As a cat 

 alogue the book never had any scientific value, since most of the 

 species enumerated are only manuscript names,* still it contains, 

 in my opinion, some points of interest which deserve to be rescued 

 from oblivion. 



Melsheimer was not a mere collector of specimens, but paid 

 considerable attention to the food habits and mode of occurrence. 

 The many hundreds of species which he sent to his friend, Prof. 



A. W. Knoch, of Brunswick, Germany, were evidently accom 

 panied by numerous notes, and only a few of these (and certainly 

 not the most interesting ones) were published by Knoch in his 

 "Neue Beytrage," etc. (1801), or referred to by Illiger. In 

 Melsheimer's Catalogue we still find many names of Coleoptera, 

 derived from those of the food-plants, and it is certainly to be 



* Dr. Hagen says that of the 1,363 species only 205 are now surely known, 

 but from the copy of the catalogue before me I find that more than twice 

 that number can be identified. This copy, kindly presented to me by Mr. 



B. P. Mann, is that used by F. V. Melsheimer, and contains numerous 

 manuscript corrections and additions, partly made by the author and partly 

 made by his eldest son, the Rev. J. F. Melsheimer, the correspondent of 

 Thomas Say. The latest of these additions dates from the year 1825. A 

 few notes and an index, written previously to 1834, are from the hand of 

 Dr. F. E. Melsheimer. 



