THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 29 



NOTES ON COLEOPTERA.— No. 5. 



BV JOHN HAMILTON, M. D., ALLEGHENY, PA. 



Cicindela. A glance over the catalogue shows many names marked 

 as varieties of others, and a glance into the boxes of any fair collection 

 shows these same to have a diversity of appearance, that in many 

 instances requires an educated experience to reconcile with their being 

 specifically identical ; as for example, a green C. sex-giittata and a black 

 conscnta/iea, or an immaculate green unicolor and a black modcsta. "With 

 systematists, size, color and markings have no primary weight in specific 

 identity ; that is, when the species are not made. It is not here purposed 

 to enter on the relation of races, the determining causes of which are 

 beyond reasonable conjecture and must have been indefinitely remote, 

 since hereditary reversion to a common ancestral type is obsolete, and 

 many varieties breed true to themselves without producing any of the 

 others ; but, to protest against the practice some collectors have of 

 ignoring varieties in making exchanges, as sending vulturina or prasina 

 instead of obsoleta; and to advise that they be treated as species. Indeed 

 it is quite possible when their internal anatomy is better known and 

 structures like the sexual organs studied and used in systematic work, as 

 has been done by Dr. Horn in Corphyra, some of these varieties may 

 turn out to be species. I take var. consentanea and var. modesta 

 abundantly in the pine woods of New Jersey near the coast, basking in 

 the sunshine on the white sand, but neither sex-giittata, nor scutellaris, 

 nor any intervening varieties are found near there, and I doubt greatly 

 whether the opposite sexes would recognize relationship or produce 

 fertile offspring. C. repanda and var. 12-guttata are found in great plenty 

 here and do not appear to mingle, each race confining itself to its own 

 territory — the former to the river shore and benches, the latter to the 

 rocky creeks and adjacent plateaus — and are not known to hybridize or 

 in any way acknowledge kinship. The above recommendation is intended 

 to apply to the other families of Coleoptera as well as to Cicindela, and it 

 is believed every race that is distinct should have a name for the con- 

 venience of collectors, if for no other purpose. 



Dyschirius. The following, with the other named beetles, were taken 

 Aug. 27th, on Brigantine Island, N. J., in a salt marsh on a sandy spot 

 about three feet by two and elevated some six inches above the level of 



