Casey — A Revision of the American Paederini. 41 



ventral — otherwise unmodified. Length 6.0 mm.; width 0.8 mm. 



Florida and Louisiana Ingnbre Lee. 



24 — Form stouter than in lugubre but equally small in size, much less 

 parallel, polished and deep black throughout, rather convex, the legs 

 pale flavo-testaceous, the antennae black with the two bas^al joints 

 rufous; head elongate, much narrower than the elytra, the eyes moder- 

 ate in size and prominence, anterior; punctures sparse and moderately 

 coarse; prothorax elongate, distinctly narrower than the head, the sides 

 subparallel and feebly arcuate, slightly narrowed toward apex, the 

 latter being sensibly narrower than the base; punctures rather coarse, 

 not very close-set; elytra well developed, elongate, parallel, two -fifths 

 wider and a third longer than the prothorax, the punctures moderately 

 coarse and close-set and in great part serial in arrangement; abdomen 

 much narrower than the elytra, the punctures strong but rather sparse. 

 Male with a short transverse setose fold behind the middle of the second 

 ventral, the third with a very minute discal fold, the lobe unusually 

 narrow, rather acutely triangular, not extending to the apex of the 

 fourth and occupying apical fifth or sixth of the width; sixth obtusely 

 rounded at tip; female not at hand. Length 6.7 ram.; width 1.08 mm. 

 Florida. l=parcum Lee] obliqnnm Lee. 



The arrangement proposed above may not give a succession 

 so truly in accordance with natural affinity as that based upon 

 male structural modifications, but it is thought that the char- 

 acters employed, together with variations of the color scheme, 

 are sufficiently radical and constant to enable the student to 

 place any specimen he may have at hand, irrespective of sex. 

 It is possible, for example, that parallelum may be more 

 closely allied to floridanum than to coloradense or arizonense, 

 and it was probably by a hasty examination of the sexual 

 characters alone, that Dr. Horn was led to the conclusion that 

 it was identical with floridanum; the form, coloration and 

 sculpture are, however, altogether different, and, other than the 

 similarity in type of sexual characters, there is no close rela- 

 tionship between these two species. The name proximum was 

 applied to one of those rather perplexing variations having 

 the elytra less elongate, but it probably does not differ even 

 subspecifically. 



At Austin, Texas, I collected a very large series of the 

 widely distribnted pi7neriani(m, in order to form an idea of the 

 extent of specific variation and find that this is rather surpris- 

 ing and unusual, some of the very small depauperate individ- 

 uals being proportionately more slender, with the head 



