58 FAMILY III. — CORIMEL.-ENID^E. 



tooth at front angle very small, awl-shaped, the one at humeral angle 

 small, subtriangular, its apex acute, produced slightly backward and 

 downward. Under surface closely and nearly regularly punctate 

 throughout. Other characters as in key. Length 5 — 5.5; width, 3.5 — 

 3.8 mm. 



Pine, Lake Co., Ind., May 20 (Gerhard). Northern Illinois 

 (Hart) . Ranges from Quebec and New England to Kansas and 

 Colorado ; not known south of New Jersey. 



Family III. CORIMEL^NID^E Uhler, 1872a, 471. 

 The Negro Bugs. 



Small oval, convex, usually black bugs, having the head sub- 

 triangular, broader than long, more or less declivent, its apex 

 rounded ; cheeks, in our species, not exceeding tylus ; antennae 

 shorter than head and thorax, 5-jointed ; beak slender, 4- 

 jointed; pronotum subquadrangular, broader than long, its 

 hind angles not prominent ; scutellum very broad, strongly con- 

 vex, longer than the corium, covering almost the entire abdo- 

 men, its tip very broadly rounded ; f rena very short ; corium 

 largely membranous, the exposed opaque part very narrow; 

 first ventral very narrow, almost or wholly covered by the 

 metasternum ; meso- and metapleura opaque, rugose, the osteo- 

 lar opening extended as a tapering canal ; tibiae armed with 

 slender spines; front ones not fossorial; tarsi 3-jointed. 



Malloch (1919, 207) has shown that Thyreocoris scarabceoides 

 L., the European genotype of Thyreocoris, the genus of the fam- 

 ily under which Van Duzee places all our species, differs from 

 our American species in having the cheeks contiguous in front 

 of and concealing the tip of tylus, and the chitinized part of 

 the wing broad from base to apex, whereas in our forms it is 

 very much narrowed. Our North American species are there- 

 fore placed in three genera, all of which occur in the eastern 

 states. Since the genus Corimeloena White (1839) is the oldest 

 of these, it serves as the basis for the family name as above 

 used. 



The family has by Van Duzee and recent authors been com- 

 bined with the Cydnidae, but the characters separating the 

 two are sharper and more distinct than those separating the 

 Scutelleridae and Pentatomidae. Moreover the habits of the 

 two groups are very different, the Corimelaenids, occurring 



