106 THE CA>iADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Having been described originally in Europe, and introduced, like 

 many odiers, into our Catalogues uncharacterized, collectors here have to 

 depend on tradition for a knowledge of the species. When recent and 

 fresh there is no trouble in distinguishing them by differences in color and 

 the arrangement of the scales ; but with age and abrasion these disappear 

 in many individuals, and anatomical characters have to be resorted to. 



Normally, canaliculatus is ferruginous, and has the elytra with feebly 

 impressed striae, the base, middle and apex being covered so densely with 

 whitish scales as to produce a tri-fasciate appearance. The sides of 

 the thorax are likewise densely coated with scales similarly colored. 

 squamiger is darker, slate-colored, or blackish brown. The scales are 

 narrower and more uniformly distributed, but condensed on the centres of 

 the disk of each elytron, so as to form a small round white spot, often 

 obsolete. The striae of the elytra are scarcely traceable. 



It is not necessary for our purpose to relate minor anatomical differ- 

 ences, as there is one easy of observation that can always be relied on to 

 separate doubtful individuals, namely, the epistoma and clypeus. 



In canaliculatus this is short, somewhat convex, slightly channeled in 

 the centres, with a deep notch or depression at the middle of the anterior 

 margin. 



In squamiger the same part is prominent, somewhat broadly concave, 

 with the anterior margin rounded. These curious little beetles occur here 

 abundantly on flowers from April till July, and occasionally till late in 

 autumn. They hybernate in colonies, in crevices of standing trees in 

 process of dry decay, where I have several times found them in large 

 numbers. 



Elleschus bipunctatus Linn. This is an introduced European species, 

 first brought to notice by Dr. Leconte, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc, v. 17, p. 621, 



marked with rather obscure impressed lines, a broad shallow groove along the middle of 

 their thorax, which groove is more deep anteriorly, and their anterior shanks with a row 

 of about five little uneven teeth along their outer edge. 



" In the month of April last, I met with sixteen of these beetles beneath the bark 

 of a pine slump, slightly above the surface of the ground. The stump had been much 

 eaten, by white ants apparently, the sap wood being all consumed and the cavity thus 

 formed being stuffed with sand and dirt which had been carried up from the soil beneath, 

 in which these insects were lying, torpid in their winter quarters, most of them crowded 

 together in a heap in a single cavity in this dirt, the others scattered about in it singly, 

 their larvae having no doubt subsisted upon the decaying wood," — [Ed. C. E.] 



