868 FAMILY XXIX. — MIRID^. 



elytra; corium often in great part brown, cuneus velvety-black; mem- 

 brane hyaline-white, fuscous at base, veins and cells blackish; legs whit- 

 ish-yellow, tibiae and beak tinged with yellow. Joints 1 and 2 of antennae 

 pale yellow, 1 one-tenth shorter than width of vertex; 2 one-half longer 

 than 1, slightly thickened toward apex; 3 and 4 fuscous-brown, 3 three- 

 fourths the length of 2, 4 slightly longer than 2. Pronotum as under 

 genus heading, its front portion declivent; disk thickly and evenly punc- 

 tate, and with a subbasal impression near each humeral angle. Meso- 

 scutum convex, narrowly exposed. Length, 2.7 — 3.1 mm. 



Royal Palm Park, Hillsboro Canal and Dunedin, Fla., Nov. 

 18 — April 3 ; swept from low herbage and beaten from cedar 

 and moonvine along the borders of moist hammocks. Recorded 

 from Crescent City, Fla. ; also from California. A neotropical 

 species ranging south from Florida through the West Indies 

 and Mexico. The pubescence in specimens beaten from the 

 same plant varies in hue from golden-yellow to gray, the 

 holotype of var. aureopubescens Knight (1926c, 102) being based 

 upon a specimen in which it is of the former hue. 



III. Pycnoderes Guerin, 1857, 168. 



Small oval or oblong-oval species having the head, pronotum 

 and scutellum punctate, shining; elytra opaque, almost smooth; 

 head wider across eyes than apex of pronotum, front subver- 

 tical, vertex with a transverse impression, tylus prominent, de- 

 curved ; beak reaching between middle coxae; antennae slender, 

 about three-fourths the length of body, the length of joints 

 varying as to species, 3 and 4 more slender than the basal ones ; 

 pronotum as in generic key, its basal half strongly gibbous, 

 usually with a distinct median and shorter lateral impression ; 

 elytra with margin of embolium visibly curved ; cuneus almost 

 horizontal, its fracture scarcely evident. Seven of the nine*" 

 known North American species occur in the eastern states. 



KEY TO EASTERN' SPECIES OF PYCNODERES. 



a. Larger, length 3 or more mm. 

 b. Second antennal subequal in length to width of head across eyes ; 

 legs pale yellow, the apical third of hind femora alone darker; 

 veins of membrane not distinctly darker than the disk. 



v'Y.iii Duzee (1917, 300) has recorded Pycnoderes in run- us (Dist.), a Guate- 

 malan and West Indian species, from the "S. St." The only mention of its occur- 

 rence in this country which I can find, and probably the one on which Van Duzee 

 based his record, is that of Uhler in his "Hemiptera of Grenada" (1894a, 193), where 

 be ays, after his notes of its occurrence in Grenada: "In the southern United States 

 it lives in midsummer on low herbs in open places on sandy beaches of streams." Dis- 

 t.nit s species is very close to, if not a synonym of, P. quadrimaculatus and Uhler, In 

 tiKikin^ tin- above statement, probably confused the two. 



