54 CASEY 



tinct from Poecilonota and not a subgenus. Anataxis, proposed for 

 Halecia gentilis, is not closely related to Dicerca or Poscilonoia, but I 

 can imagine no better place for it than that assigned in the table. 

 It was placed in Agaocera, by Waterhouse, but on examining the 

 figure given by Laporte and Gory for Atithaxia gigas, the type of 

 AgcBocera, I cannot perceive the least serration of the sides of the elytra 

 and, besides, the pronotal and elytral structure is so different that I 

 venture to propose for gentilis a separate genus. This species is 

 entered twice in the Kerremans Catalogue, once under AgcBocera and 

 again under Halecia. The genus Trachykele, of Marseul, is very 

 aberrant, not only in general facies and absence of scutellum, but 

 in the virtually free basal segment of the abdomen. It is quite prob- 

 able that Buprestis lecontei Lap.-Gory, constitutes a genus different 

 from that founded upon such species as hlondeli and opulenta. 



The delimitation of species in this group of genera, and indeed 

 throughout the BuprestidcT, is rather more difficult and uncertain 

 than usual, because of erratic variation in many of the elements 

 generally relied upon for the definition of species. Kerremans alludes 

 to this in the introduction to his general catalogue of the family, and 

 intimates that there may possibly be no such reality in nature as 

 species or genera, or even higher groups, and that it may be all a 

 matter of individual opinion. The expression, "opinionative spe- 

 cies," is frequently employed in alluding to those which are main- 

 tained or reduced from time to time through the idiosyncrasies of 

 writers, though rather meaningless after all, because of the imprac- 

 ticability of standardizing human intelligence; but, on the strength 

 of his expressed doubts and apprehensions, the author quoted has had 

 recourse to a wholesale system of " lumping, " which appears to me not 

 fully justified. Because of deficiency in material I have not always 

 been able to make up my mind definitely as to species, having had to 

 rely more on general habitus than anything else in a number of cases. 

 Those forms which are consequently to some extent doubtful to me as 

 species are inscribed as subspecies in the various tables, but, because 

 of the undesirability of trinomials, these subspecies should be quoted 

 under two names only when referred to verbally or in text; they 

 would not have been named at all if there were not a very strong prob- 

 ability of true specific value in every case. In some parts of the series 

 I have united and separated forms many times before coming to a 



