NORTH AMERICAN COLEOPTERA. 65 



A monograph of f lie speoies of C'HRTSOBOTHRIS 

 inhabiting the United State*^. 



BY GEORGE H. HORN, M. D. 



Since the publication of the " Revision of the Buprestidae of the 

 United States," by Dr. LeConte (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc. xi, 1859), 

 the species of Chrysobothri^ have remained practically undisturbed. 

 There have been in the meantime but six species described, of which 

 two are valid. The material has been allowed to accumulate in our 

 cabinets until enough has been obtained to supply defects in the 

 original series and to render it probable that veiy few more new spe- 

 cies will be discovered. Nor has it appeared that science has seri- 

 ously suffered by retaining many of the species more than twenty 

 years without names, and it is highly probable that much unnecessary 

 synonymy has been avoided by the aggregation of series, which at 

 the same time indicate the great variability of many of our species 

 and the real characters separating them. The publication of descrip- 

 tions of isolated species in advance of any monographic work, or 

 preparation for it, must necessarily be done at the risk of insuffi- 

 ciency as important characters are frequently developed by serious 

 study which are overlooked in the haste of descriptive work. Chryso- 

 bothris is no exception, and the books are foil of descriptions, some 

 of which having no value in themselves are useful merely in fixmg 

 specific names in our literature until comparison places them in the 

 grand crowd of synonyms. Our species have quite their shai'e of 

 synonymy, jn'incipally due to Laporte and Gory ; for, of the twenty- 

 two species mentioned by them together or by Gory in the supple- 

 ment, l>ut five remain valid and one (errans) does not belong to our 

 fauna, and it may be added that the figures in their work leave much 

 to be desired and the descriptions are, for the most part, very insuffi- 

 cient. 



Anterior to the " Revision" above cited the species described by 

 Laporte and Gory were made the subject of a special synonymical 

 study by Dr. LeConte, and the results published in Proc. Acad. 

 1857, pp. 6-10, with approximately correct conclusions which were 

 confirmed or corrected by studies of the types then in the possession 

 of Count Mniszech, in Paris (Proc. Acad. 1873, pp. 330-333). 



TRANS. AMER. ENT. SOC. (9) MARCH, 1886. 



