The West Coast Species of Pedilus Fisch. 

 (Corphyra Sayy^ 



H. C. FALL 



I have In this essay used the generic name Pedilus in place of the 

 long established Corphyra of Say, in deference to the opinion of 

 Mr, Champion, as expressed In the "Biologia," although I have had 

 no opportunity of personally verifying his conclusions. The differ- 

 ences In ventral formation of Pedilus and Corphyra, as originally 

 stated by Du Val, and cited by Horn in his first Synopsis — Trans. 

 Am. Ent. Soc, 1871, p. 278, — if correctly represented, would 

 appear to be amply sufficient for their separation, but there is prob- 

 ably some misapprehension here. 



It is a little remarkable that with all the collecting done within 

 the bounds of California prior to the arrival of the " '49ers," no 

 species of this genus were made known by either Rschscholtz, Man- 

 nerheim or Motschulsky, although several are more or less abun- 

 dant In the vicinity of San Francisco. It was left for Le Conte, In 

 1851, to describe the first species {punctulatus) from this region, 

 and in his synopsis of the genus in 1855 this was the only one known 

 from the West Coast. Two more — vittatus and funehris — were 

 described by Horn in 1871, and on working up the extensive 

 material brought back from the Coast by G. R. Crotch In 1873, six 

 more species were added by the same author. At this time Horn 

 presented a table for the separation of the West Coast species, and 

 remarked that "the number from the Pacific region now equals that 

 from the entire region east of the Rocky Mountains." The last 

 paper that has appeared on the genus Is a short review of all the 

 species of our fauna by Dr. Horn in 1883, in which one new Call- 

 fornian form — flabellatus — is made known. Of the ten described 

 forms, funehris and distinguendus prove to be only color phases of 

 punctulatus and bardii respectively, the net result being eight distinct 

 species known to this region up to the present time. 



In a recent study of the West Coast material contained In my own 

 collection, supplemented by the greater part of that In the collec- 



