466 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. in 



apparently misled him into describing his specimen as new. Signoret's 

 (1882, pi. 9, fig. 116) illustration does not agree with the type in the 

 following respects: (1) head has submarginal setigerous punctures 

 arranged four close-set in front of eye and one more widely spaced 

 beyond, not as pictured; (2) on the pronotum the lateral punctures 

 are much fewer in number and the posterolateral angles are neither 

 so prominent nor sharp as shown; (3) apex of scutellum is shown 

 too long and narrow; (4) hemelytron of type has only one row of 

 punctures on clavus, fewer and more irregularly spaced punctures on 

 mesocorium and more punctm-es on exocoriiun; (5) both evapor- 

 atoria are misrepresented — mesopleural evaporatorium shown as 

 acute, while it is rounded in the type, and that of metapleuron does 

 not extend to anterolateral margin of segment as shown in the figure; 

 and (6) the posterior emargination of the peritreme does not show the 

 large hookhke blade visible in the illustration. The author was 

 unable to find any feature to separate the type from bilineatus. 



The name uhleri was proposed by Signoret for the Carolina and 

 Georgia specimens which Uhler (1877, p. 385) had identified as Pan- 

 gaeus rugifrons (Herrick-Schaeff er) . Uhler's use of rugifrons was in 

 the same sense that it had been proposed, for a species of the south- 

 eastern United States. Thus uhkri must be considered a synonym 

 of rugifrons, which, in turn, is considered to be the same as bilineatus. 

 Signoret's (1822, p. 252) transfer of the name rugifrons to Mexican 

 species was erroneous, so Horvath (1919, p. 236) proposed the name 

 rugiceps for the Mexican form. 



As with most other species in the family, the biology and ecology 

 of this insect is poorly known. The author's experience with it is 

 that it may be quite common in an area and still be rarely collected- 

 Intensive field work in St. Louis, Mo., and adjacent territory had 

 yielded less than a half dozen specimens in more than 20 years, and 

 these always under debris on the ground. Yet, when it became pos- 

 sible to examine the miscellaneous msect material collected in the 

 Japanese beetle traps in the St. Louis area, several times that many 

 specimens would be seen in one week. Apparently, these insects had 

 been attracted to the eugenol or geranol that had been used as an 

 attractant for the Japanese beetles. Judging from certain published 

 notes, this species may be quite injurious to cultivated plants. Cas- 

 sidy (1939, p. 322) reported it as doing "serious damage to cotton" 

 in Ai-izona. In the same year, Tissot (1939, p. 455) wrote: "pepper 

 seed beds at Fort Myers [Florida] being severely damaged. Beds 

 mulched with grass and weeds, which probably was the cause of the 

 bugs congregating in such large numbers." 



