128 Journal New York Entomological Society. [VoI. ix. 



since been learned, viz., that the beetles are quite easily alarmed, 

 and, when disturbed, drop to the ground and secrete themselves in 

 crevices, under clods, or about the bases of the plants. There was 

 no evidence, in this field, to throw any light upon the food plants of 

 the species, other than corn. 



These facts were recorded in substance by the writer in Report of 

 United States Commissioner of Agriculture, for the year 1887, p. 

 147, and up to the present year, this has remained the only published 

 notice relative to the food habits of the insect, so far as I have been 

 able to learn. Prof. S. J. Hunter, in a recent letter, reports injury 

 to young corn, at Hartford, Kansas, May 31, 1894, and Prof. S. A. 

 Forbes writes me that it had been taken at Cobden, Union county, 

 Illinois, on corn. Mr. W. H. Ashmead, in his " Notes on Cotton 

 Insects in Mississippi" published in Insect Life, Vol. VII, pp. 25- 

 29, 240-247, 1894, includes the species among those found on the 

 cotton plant, but it was not observed to feed thereon. 



The species was described in 1824* by Thomas Say, under the 

 name of Colaspis denticollis, as follows : 



C. denticollis. — Lateral thoracic edge three-toothed ; elytra serrate. Inhabits 

 Missouri. 



Body black, slightly bronzed, covered with dense, robust, cinereous hairs : an- 

 tennae dull rufous at base ; thorax with three equal, equidistant teeth on the lateral 

 edge ; elytra with lateral edge minutely dentated ; tip simple ; anterior tibire and 

 posterior thighs one-toothed. Length, nearly one-fifth of an inch. 



To the ordinary observer, these beetles are about three-sixteenths 

 of an inch long and about one-third as wide as long, frequently so 

 covered with earth, which becomes intermixed with the dense hairs, 

 that they look more like animated bits of soil than they do like in- 

 sects. See Plate VII, Figs, i, 2, i dorsal, and 2, lateral views. 



The species is clearly a southwestern one, and, probably, one of 

 those that has worked its way northward from Mexico,' and, perhaps. 

 Central America. But on this point I shall have more to say later. 

 Its distribution in the United States may be outlined as extending 

 from Washington, D. C, to extreme southwestern Iowa, southern Ari- 

 zona, and Texas, Florida and Virginia. The exact localities, so far as 



* Jotir. Phila. Acad. Nat. Set., Vol. Ill, p. 448, being Descriptions of Co- 

 leopterous Insects Collected in the late Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, per- 

 formed by order of Mr. Calhoun, Secretary of War, and under command of Major 

 Long. 



