8 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Vol. xix. 



^-pustulatum, he says, " does not seem to be at all abundant, and my 

 cabinet contains only the single specimen taken some twenty vears 

 ago." Mr. Davis has taught us that this species is abundant on oaks 

 infested with Kermes. Instances might be multiplied by citing the 

 species he has described from single specimens, but the above are 

 sufficient to show the weakness of the collection with which he 

 worked. As to the results he reached by using type of coloration as 

 a primary taxonomic character, we may compare his statement (p. 

 109), '' ovoid ens and dcscrtorinii of the table are in all probability 

 subspecies of calif ornicus," with this sentence printed nine years 

 later: "Neither of these forms {ovoidciis and descrtonnn) has any- 

 thing whatever to do with calif oruiciis, either in general appearance 

 or other token of consanguinity." The first statement was possibly 

 the result of studies based on type of coloration alone; the second 

 followed the description in our Journal of the structure of the claws. 



Again, in the Canadian Entomologist article, p. 413, Casey has 

 described Brachyacantha mctator n. sp., using color and maculation 

 as his guide. Later in Volume XLII, p. 109, he has transferred this 

 species to Hypcraspis, because an examination of the structure of 

 the tibiae showed the absence of the tooth which is characteristic of 

 the genus in wdiich he originally placed it. 



There is no intention in these remarks to belittle Major Casey's 

 work, which indeed speaks for itself; but the intent is to show that 

 his adoption of type of coloration as a primary taxonomic character 

 w'as based upon the study of too few specimens to enable him to 

 judge correctly the status of each specimen and led him into a 

 number of confessed errors which, to a certain extent, must deprive 

 his conclusions of the authority they would otherwise derive from 

 his long experience in the study of Coleoptera. 



Let us now compare the information contained in Johnson's work. 

 This author was fortunate in finding a hibernating mass of 15,415 

 individuals of Hippodamia convcrgcus at Marsh Hill, Fairfield, 

 Wash., which being sorted was found to contain 6,954 normal speci- 

 mens and 63 different varieties, some so close to normal convcrgens 

 that they would have been accepted as such, others more aberrant 

 and gradually leading to the varieties that had already been sup- 

 pressed as synonyms and beyond them to varieties that had pre- 

 viously, in the light of the series ordinarily found in good collections, 



