Report of the State Entomologist 257 



Probably an Introduced Insect. 

 It has for a long time been accepted as a native species, but from 

 its having been found in recent years, in importations from other 

 countries, and also from some late synonymical references of it by 

 European authors, as will be noticed hereafter, it seems quite probable 

 that it has been introduced in the United States through commerce 

 from the Old World, and possibly from Asia. 



Known Under Two Names. 



The differences separating some of the species of the Bruchidce are 

 very slight as would naturally be expected in so large a family (about 

 four hundred species are known), and all possessing the habit in 

 common of feeding on, and undergoing their transformations within, 

 the seeds of plants, mainly those of the Leguminosce.* 



To this close resemblance it is owing that the species under present 



consideration appears in our entomological literature under the two 



names of Bruchus obsoletus and Bruchus fabce — Prof. Kiley having 



found in some examples received from Pennsylvania, in 1870, features 



which seemed to him to warrant the designation of another species, 



and accordingly gave them minute description under the latter name. 



Dr. Horn, our conceded authority in the Coleoptera, not being able to 



recognize in them differences of specific value, has referred them to 



B. obsoletus. In a late Washington publication, edited by Dr. Kiley^f 



we find the form referred to as Bruchus obsoletus var. fabce Riley, and 



this will perhaps be accepted as a proper settlement of a disputed 



name. 



Earliest Attack on Cultivated Beans. 



The earliest notice of its operating upon cultivated beans, is that 

 given by Dr. Fitch, in 1860, he having received a small i>arcel of 

 infested beans from Providence, E. I. Next in order, Mr. James 

 Angus, of West Farms, N. Y., writing in 1869, loc. cit. sujj., states that 

 he had seen five or six years previous, a heap of beans lying on a 

 barn floor, nearly all of which were infested with the beetle — one- 

 half, at least, quite badly. J Some of the beans contained as many as 

 fourteen of the larvae or grubs. 



Mr. S. S. Rathvon, of Lancaster, Pa., writing the same year (1869), 

 reports the beetle as having been discovered infesting ripe seed beans 

 in Lancaster, within the preceding five years. * 



* They infest the plants of this order iu the tropics. Kirby and Spence state: " In 

 tropical climates the seeds of almost every pod-bearing plant, as of the genera 

 Gleditsia, Theobroma. Mimosa, Rohinia, etc., are eaten by some species of Bruchus." See 

 also, J. G. .Jack, in "Weevils in Leguminous Tree-seeds," in Garden and Forest, iv, 

 1891, pp 280. 281, flg. 49. 



t Insert Life. v. ii, 1890, p. 332. 



X American Enlomologist, v. ii, 1869, p. 125. 



