54 PROC. ENT. soc. WASH., VOL. 21, NO. 3, MAR., 1919 



upon this plant it had fed upon ripe avocado fruit and, when starved 

 to it, upon the seed of the same. 1 



Two quite distinct though closely related forms of adults were 

 mentioned in the 1912 note and it was then hoped that more 

 material would soon be available, as well as observations on 

 habits in its native home, but the infested seed subsequently 

 received in Washington seems to have contained only the larvae 

 of a somewhat smaller weevil often occurring a dozen or more 

 in a single seed, and which when reared proved to be the species 

 described below as Conotrachelus perseae. I know of no one who 

 has noticed either weevil in its wild state. An excellent photo- 

 graph of very serious injury to the pulp surrounding the seed was 

 made by Wilson Popenoe at Panajachel, Guat. in Jan. 1917, and 

 will apear in his forthcoming paper on Guatemalan Avocados 

 (U. S. Dept. Agr. Bull. 743, pi. XI). The larvae there shown are 

 certainly weevil larvae (probably C. perseae}, but when found were 

 mistaken for the larvae of the moth Stenoma sp. 



The two forms of Heilipus are so distinct in habitus that it 

 seems best to use distinctive names for them but it is more than 

 likely that intergrading forms will be discovered in avocado seed 

 from other tropical American localities and require the reduction 

 of the new form to the rank of a subspecies. In the ten specimens 

 before me the relative lengths of the rostrum may be shown by 

 the decimal quotients found by dividing the measured length of 

 the beak (from margin of eye) by the measured length of the prono- 

 tum (before scutellum) which are as follows: 



H. lauri &<?, 1.42, 1.45, 1.47; 9 9, 1.81, 1.84, 1.86. 

 //. piUieri tf tf , 1.56, 1.68; 9 9, 2.19, 2.45. 



The two forms are distinguishable as follows: 



Ground color piceous, legs concolorous; elytra with conspicuous transverse 

 antemedian and subapical squamose patches; rostrum of a 1 less than l J /2 

 times length of pronotum, of 9 less than twice pronotal length. Habitat 

 in seeds of Persea persea from Mexico. Heilipus lauri Boh. 



Ground color red, legs bicolored; no elytral fascia; rostrum of 6* more than 

 l'/2 times pronotal length, of 9 nearly 2*/2 times pronotal length. Habitat 

 in seeds of Persea pittieri from San Jose, Costa Rica. Heilipus pittieri n. sp. 



Heilipus lauri Boh. 1845. The type locality in Mexico from 

 which Wahl (Professor of Botany in Copenhagen?) obtained the 

 infested avocado seed can probably never be located; Champion 

 1902 saw two specimens from Capulalpam (Salle); Barber 1912 

 had seen three specimens from the U. S. that had issued from im- 



1 This was a 9 specimen of H. lauri, received from A. S. Hoyt Aug 1, 

 1913, which he had taken at Los Angeles, Cal., out of a seed from a dealer 

 in Mexico City, and which died Dec. 19. 



