186 Kansas Academy of Science. 



great flat masses of rock in which rain-water collects, and 

 where the teamsters water their horses and fill their canteens, 

 in the absence of better water. 



Our camp was but a few yards north of the Mexican boun- 

 dary in a broad, very flat, green, almost treeless valley, bor- 

 dered by bluffs covered with dense chaparral, beyond which 

 was the parched, limitless mesa — a veritable oasis in the 

 desert. Beside us a noisy artesian well belched forth from an 

 eight-inch pipe clear, warm water, that loitered off through 

 the salt-grass to a pond half a mile below, making the low 

 vegetation doubly green along its path. While pitching the 

 tents I noticed with feverish anxiety an occasional bright green 

 tiger-beetle arise from the bare spots to evade our footsteps, 

 and I could scarcely wait till camp was made to put the net 

 into play; for the ground seemed fairly strewn with tnem. 

 I mistook the species for unicolor. Starting early next morn- 

 ing I returned at noon with over sixty of them. Little did I 

 realize that instead of unicolor I had a nice catch of the rare 

 pimeriana, known to science by a single specimen taken by the 

 Mexican Boundary Survey years before, possibly in the same 

 valley. The habit of flight was identical with scutellaris, and 

 the ground on which they occurred was mostly bare and some- 

 what sandy. Their remarkable tameness came to be a matter 

 of no little comment, as they ran about the dinner-table de- 

 vouring the ants that came for crumbs, and we often amused 

 ourselves throwing pebbles at them. On particularly "lazy" 

 days our ambitions would actually degenerate to such a level 

 that we would bottle a few of them to make the catch look 

 bigger. Up and down the valley, however, they were not 

 found, but were confined to a limited area in the vicinity of 

 the artesian well. 



The species differs from unicolor principally in (1) the 

 highly polished surface; (2) the deep-blue reflections toward 

 the apex; (3) the brassy reflections of head and thorax: (4) 

 the deep, uniform punctuation of the elytra over the entire 

 surface; (5) the minute serrulation of elytral apices; (6) the 

 equal robustness and equal hairiness of the front in the two 

 sexes; (7) the white color of the female labrum; and (8) the 

 light color of all but the tip segments of the palpi. The color 

 is often entirely blue, with the brassy reflections lacking. Most 

 specimens are immaculate, though the median and humeral 



