2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 124 



be appropriate to re-evaluate these groups and adjust their status 

 in the hierarchy accordingly. In the meantime, we must go ahead with 

 the procedure that is more expedient in accomplishing the initial 

 goals. 



The preliminary work upon which the following synopsis is based 

 was done more than a decade ago and forms the basis for the arrange- 

 ment of the genus in the "Checklist of the Millipeds of North 

 America," in which three valid species were recognized. Present 

 departure from this arrangement lies in the addition of two new 

 species and a new subspecies, the transfer into Cleptoria of a form 

 originally described in Sigmoria, and the transfer out of Cleptoria of 

 one species into a new genus as yet unpublished. Surprisingly few 

 specimens have been available for study despite the extensive field 

 work done by Leslie Hubricht in the southeastern States. 



The first species referable to the genus Cleptoria as currently 

 conceived was described by C. H. Bollman in 1889, under the name 

 Fontaria rileyi, on the basis of a single male taken at Macon, Ga., 

 by L. M. Underwood. The male gonopods were not illustrated, but 

 the descriptive phrase "terminal end subsimilar to a bird's head" 

 made it possible for Dr. R. V. Chamberlin to associate F. rileyi, in 

 the original proposal of Cleptoria (1939), with his type-species C. 

 macra. In 1943, C. rnacra was synonymized under C. rileyi by H. F. 

 Loomis, who had seen Bollman's type-specimen and had felt that the 

 two nominal species were identical; in the following year (1944) 

 Loomis described C. shelfordi. Since then, no further published 

 references pertaining to the genus have appeared other than the 

 "Checklist" (1958), in which C. macra is reinstated as a valid species 

 without comment. In the same paper, however, in which Cleptoria 

 was proposed, Chamberlin also described a species under the name 

 Sigmoria divergent; more recently, I (1950) added an additional form, 

 S. nigrescens, that has an obvious affinity to S. divergens. A restudy 

 of both of these forms indicates that the relationship between them 

 is subspecific at best and that S. divergens should be transferrred to 

 Cleptoria. 



I have been fortunate in being able to restudy the type-specimeus 

 of all of the species mentioned above. Dr. R. V. Chamberlin (RVC) 

 very kindly lent the types of C. rnacra from his personal collection in 

 1948 and facilitated then re-examination in 1963. Dr. P. J. Darlington 

 kindly allowed access to the type of C. shelfordi at the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology during a visit of mine in 1949. The collection 

 of the U.S. National Museum, under the care of Dr. Ralph E. Crabill, 

 contains not only the type of Fontaria rileyi, but specimens of a related 

 form from Alabama that had been recognized as new and so labeled 

 by O. F. Cook over 60 years ago. 



