1906.] 47 



by various Coleopterists at Leighton, Deal, Shirley, King's Lynn, 

 Oxford, New Forest, Chatham, Paris District, &e. ; 350 examples 

 of familinris, chiefly from Leighton ; upwards of 100 lucida from 

 Deal, Isle of Wight, S. Issey (Cornwall), King's Lynn, South])ort, &c., 

 and I am of opinion that anthohia is a fairly good species. It pos- 

 sesses distinctive characters, some of which are a little difficult 

 perhaps to detect in isolated individuals, but apparent when viewed 

 in a good series, and when series of each species are set beside each 

 other for comparison. 



Various continental Coleopterists have described the insect, but 

 no description I have seen seems to me to bring out fully the 

 differentiating characters of the three species, 



(1) Size — Both Putzeys (Mem. Soc. Koy, Sci. Liege, 1866, 

 p. 184?) and Ganglbauer (Die Kafer von Mittel-europa, i, p, 320) 

 make anthohia of the same size as familiaris. In my experience it is 

 intermediate between familiaris and lucida. The three species over- 

 lap, but antlwhia, in the examples before me, never attains the greatest 

 size of familiaris ; it averages about \ mm, less, in length, than this 

 species, nor does it occur as small as the smallest lucida. 



The following statistics of averages taken on a hundred speci- 

 mens of each species (all the familiaris and anthohia being from 

 Leighton, and the lucida from various localities) show this : — 



mm. mm. mm, mm. mm. mm. mm. mm. mm. mm. mm. 

 4i : 5 : 5i : 5i : 51 : 6 : 6i : 6^ : 6! : 7 : 7i 



A. familiaris {lao) 1 : : 1 : 22 : 26 : 19 : 16 : 14 : 1 



A. anthohia {\Q0) 2:2 : 7 : 14 : 39 : 19 : 16 : 1 



A. lucida (100) 7 : 11 : 14 : 34 : 23 : 11 



Average size, approximately. Range. 



A. familiaris 6i mm 54 mm. — 74 mm. 



A. anthohia 6 mm 5 mm. — 6f mm. 



A. lucida 5^ mm 4f mm. — 6 mm. 



It was the smaller size of anthohia as compared with familiaris 

 that first induced me to take a few specimens of the former for 

 examination. 



(2) Coloration— (a) where the three species take a bronze shade 

 anthohia is always of a brighter shade than either familiaris or lucida. 

 Moreover, a dark greenish-blue shade occurs rarely in lucida, which 

 I have not seen in either of the others. 



(h) Anthohia is always the most shining of the three, the (^ 

 being slightly but perceptibly more so than the (^ ^ oi familiaris 

 and lucida, and the ? more markedly so than the ? ? of the two 



