1577. : 39 



a collector but few have ever been more successful, he seemed intuitively to recognise 

 any strange form instantly on its appearance, and many of the best species recorded 

 by myself in the pages of the Ent. Mo. Mag. and other publications have been the 

 result of his labours. Assisted by another brother (Mr. J. B. Matthews), in Van- 

 couver's Island he amassed a vast number of rare Coleoptera, including Zacotus 

 Matthewsi, Amphizoa Lecontei, Amphizoa Josephi, and many others new to science. 

 Of these collections, which he brought with him on his return from Vancouver's 

 Island in 1869, and of my brother's work, Dr. Le Conte, in the Annals and Mag. of 

 Nat. Hist., Dec, 1867, speaks in terms of the highest praise. " They have," he says, 

 " with great zeal explored the wildernesses of British Columbia and Vancouver's 

 Island, and, in fact, have obtained the best material yet procured for a study of the 

 distribution of species in those regions, which remain, in a scientific sense, the most 

 unexplored portions of North America." The difficulties with which an entomolo- 

 gist has to contend in those regions will be more clearly understood by the fact, that 

 several expert collectors, including the late Mr. Gr. E.. Crotch, have since failed in the 

 attempt to emulate my brother's work. — A. Matthews, Crumley : 27th Jan., 1877. 



\^Leistotropliics cingulatiis has only hitherto been recorded from North America. 



—Eds.] 



Note on Osphi/a bipunctata. — I have two specimens of Osphya, apparently 

 <? & $ , of a very peculiar description. They combine the colour of the c? 0. hipunctaia 

 with the $ form, and ai'e not more than one-quarter of the usual size of that species. 

 They were taken during an excursion to the Fens near Whittlesea, in which, as a 

 boy, I accompanied my father in 1830 ; at the same time we also captured a single 

 ? of the normal form of O. hipunctaia. They were all subsequently shown to the 

 late Mr. Curtis, who figured the larger and one of the smaller specimens in hia 

 " Illustrations of British Entomology," suggesting a doubt as to whether the latter, 

 which had been named " marginalis " by my father, was truly distinct. I now men- 

 tion this circumstance, in order to record the occurrence of this form in Osphya 

 hipunctaia, for I cannot find any characters to justify its separation from that 

 species. — Id. 



[I can fully endorse Mr. Matthew's record of the extreme variability in structure 

 and colour of this species, which is well described by Rcdtenbaeher, and has indeed 

 caused it to be named by various authors pramsta, anceps, clavipes, and himaculata. 

 In a considerable series of recent examples from Monks Wood I found many forms, 

 as is to be expected where a marked sexual disparity occurs. See my " British Beetles," 

 1866, p. 16'i.— E. C. E.] 



Supplementary note to Dr. Sharp's descriptions of New Zealand Coleoptera. — • 

 Since my last paper on New Zealand Coleoptera was sent to the Editors of this 

 Magazine, descriptions of two of the species have appeared elsewhere, so that Phy 

 matophosa hilaris, Sharp, is a synonym of Mathesis guttigera, C. O. Waterhouse, 

 Trans. Ent. Soc, April, 1877, p. 8, and Macr atria verticalis is a synonym of Macratria 

 exilis, Pascoe, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., Feb., 1877, p. 8. — D. Sharp, Thomhill : 

 June, 1877. 



