PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. XI, No. 2, pp. 47-178 April 28, 1909 



STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN BUPRESTID^. 

 By Thos. L. Casey. 



It would seem that but few sections of the Coleoptera have been so 

 neglected, or so superficially investigated with a view to scientifically 

 defining and grouping the genera, as the Buprestidas. The conspicu- 

 ous and brilliant metallic coloration prevailing among the species, 

 doubtless led the early authors to define the majority of them from 

 their salient external characters alone, and generally in few words, 

 so that the determinative literature is inadequate and frequently mis- 

 leading. These remarks apply, however, more especially to the first 

 few groups of genera as they occur in America, for some careful and 

 undoubtedly useful work has been accomplished in subsequent parts 

 of our series, for example in the genera Chrysobothris, AcmcBodera 

 and Agrilus by Dr. G. H. Horn and Mr. H. C. Fall. 



Alluding to the neglect during the past fifty years of that part of the 

 family which forms the subject of the present essay, it will suffice to 

 state that only a comparatively small proportion of the specific and 

 subspecific forms in our cabinets have been defined, that the genus 

 Chalcophora has been constituted in our lists during all this time of 

 two notably distinct genera, that the three species assigned to Hip- 

 pomelas belong in reality to three different genera, two of which are 

 not at all closely allied, and, finally, that Buprestis is separated from 

 the earlier genera by Dicerca and Pcecilonota, which differ conspicu- 

 ously in antennal structure as will appear below. This general lack 

 of interest in the taxonomic treatment of the family is apparently 

 due, in some measure at least, to actual absence of structural plasticity, 

 the entire under surface of the body being unusually fixed and con- 

 Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., April, 1909. 47 



