THE CALIFORNIAN SPECIES OF MALTHODES. 



By H. C. Fall. 



The presence of several species of Malthodes among the 

 things which Dr. Blaisdell has asked me to study in connection 

 with his forthcoming paper on the Coleoptera of Humboldt 

 County, California, offers the opportunity of reviewing the 

 Californian species of this genus in the Doctor's and my own 

 collections, a very- large proportion of which are as yet unde- 

 scribed. 



These delicate little things have been generally neglected 

 by collectors, and such cabinet specimens as one runs across 

 are too often ruined in mounting. When carefully collected 

 and mounted, they are wonderfully interesting little creatures 

 and offer an almost unparalleled wealth of sexual variation 

 in the formation of the terminal abdominal segments of the 

 male. The females are on the other hand rather monotonous 

 in their uniformity, and are rarely distinguishable specifically 

 except as accompanied by males. In the males themselves 

 there are few taxonomic characters outside of the ventral sexual 

 modifications, and this together with the fact that there is 

 little use in attempting to give comparative measurements in 

 insects having such fragile structure and soft integuments, is a 

 sufficient reason for the brevity of the following descriptions, 

 which indeed might about as well have been made still shorter. 



Very little has been said in the descriptions about the 

 females. These almost invariably differ from the males by the 

 smaller, less prominent eyes and consequently narrower head, 

 which is usually scarcely as wide as the thorax; by the shorter 

 antennas, with joints two to four more nearly equal in length, or 

 at least with the third joint not longer than the second; by the 

 rather more transverse thorax, and sometimes somewhat 

 shorter elytra. The last ventral segment in this sex is rather 

 deeply incised in the same general manner in all the species 

 here treated. 



The remarkable modifications of the abdominal apex in 

 the male are often difficult to see in their entirety, but the form 

 of the sixth and seventh ventrals is usually visible, and these 



31 



