STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN BUPRESTID.E 55 



conclusion, final as far as apparently permissible from the incomplete 

 material at hand. Kirby's species were all collected from three to ten 

 hundred miles north of our northern boundaries and some of them 

 are unquestionably different from our own; the attempt to force some 

 of our forms to bear the Kirbyan names has given rise to several mis- 

 takes. The Buprestis viridula, of Ollivier, described from Carolina, 

 is a Philippine species of Dicercomorpha. Gyascutus californicus, 

 of Horn, is assumed to form part of the genus Nanularia, though in 

 that species the last antennal joint is specially described as obtuse at 

 apex, so that this reference is somewhat hypothetical. If califor- 

 nicus is not assignable to Nanularia, however, I can suggest no other 

 place for it, as, apparently, it can be neither a Gyascutus nor a Hip- 

 pomelas. 



Hippomelas Lap.-Gory. 



The species of this genus are more elongate and subcylindric as a 

 rule than in Gyascutus and Stictocera, and of much smoother and 

 more feebly sculptured surface; they, however, occasionally become 

 rather stout in form, as in the type, which was named saginatus by 

 Mannerheim; this species is not represented in my collection at pres- 

 ent. The coloration is usually black and frequently without trace of 

 metallic lustre, but is occasionally bright and metallic, particularly 

 in mexicanus and related species of southern Mexico, and also in the 

 second subgenus, defined below. The head and eyes are large, the 

 frontal surface roughly sculptured as usual, descending at the sides in 

 a more punctate and pubescent slope or depression to the inner margin 

 of the eyes, the epistoma broadly, feebly sinuate, the antennae moder- 

 ately long and compressed, the outer joints with dense sensitive punc- 

 tures, except above, and having an irregular and somewhat inconstant 

 or vestigial apical sensory fossa near the margin of the articular for- 

 amen, and they are inserted under strong oblique frontal ridges. 

 The prosternum is not impressed though feebly flattened, the meso- 

 sternum wholly divided, the meso-metasternal suture fine and some- 

 times barely traceable, the first ventral convex medially and the legs 

 variable subgenerically. There are two subgenera as follows: — 



Tarsi shorter and thicker, the basal joint never as long as the two following 

 combined; abdomen with the basal segment shorter, behind the coxae 

 more or less evidently shorter than the second, the first suture sinuate 

 medially as usual though almost obliterated Hippomelas 



