March, 1922.] Knaus: A Rare Buprestis. 67 



stitial lines, slightly punctured ; very numerous transversely confluent light 

 yellow dots: tip slightly obliquely truncated, acute at the suture, but not 

 mucronate or dentate: edge entire; tarsi purplish-brown. 



" Obs. I can not find any notice of this very fine insect in any 

 attainable author, and having never obtained an individual in the 

 Atlantic States, I think it highly probable that it is altogether limited 

 in its range to the Western region. 



" A specimen was presented to me, when at Fort Osage on the 

 Missouri River, by Lieut. Scott, of the Rifle regiment, a gentleman, 

 whose extraordinary skill as a marksman has almost passed into a 

 proverb in that country. I obtained two other specimens during the 

 progress of Major Long's exploring party towards the mountains. 



" The thorax varies in being in some specimens of a bright blue 

 color, in others purplish." 



Although described almost one hundred years ago, this brilliantly 

 colored species has remained rare in collections. In a collecting ex- 

 perience of 37 years the writer has only taken four specimens : a 

 female at Edmond, Norton County, Kansas, in July, 1885; a female at 

 Salina. Kansas, in 1889; a male at Canadian, Tex. (dead, from a 

 Cottonwood stump), in 1903, and a female at Crow, Colo., 35 miles 

 southwest of Pueblo, June 28, 1918. 



J. W. McColloch and W. A. Hays, of the Department of Ento- 

 mology at the State Agricultural College, Manhattan, Kansas, while 

 collecting Cotalpa lanigera Linn, from willows and cottonwoods along 

 the Kansas River, June 23, 1920, found Buprestis confluenta in abun- 

 dance feeding and breeding on the young cottonwoods. Not recog- 

 nizing the rarity of the species, they collected only 34 specimens when 

 they could have taken scores more of them. 



Col. Thos. L. Casey in his publication on Buprestidse in 1909 gave a 

 lengthy description of the species based on the specimen I sent him 

 taken at Edmond, Kansas. His description of B. tesselata was also 

 made from the specimen I sent him from Canadian, Tex. The Agri- 

 cultural College, Department of Entomology, having placed the mate- 

 rial collected last June in my hands for study, I find there is no doubt 

 that Col. Casey's tesselata is a synonym. The chief characteristic of 

 tesselata is in the yellow medial ventral surface. The Manhattan 

 material shows this to be a sexual character, the males having the 



