18 



Dr. .1. L. LeConte, to whom I have forwarded specimens of this insect, has 

 kindly shown me that this species disagrees in several characters with 

 Schotnherr's more full and elaborate description of the ciirtus of Say, which 

 was probably based upon specimens furnished by Say himself. And as, bav- 

 in'' in his cabinet a species which he considers as the true curl its of Say, he 

 prefers referring our species to the Ceuthorhynchus incequalis of Say, I will- 

 ingly bow to his authority; though there is the great objection that inw- 

 qualis is described as "brown'' by Say, and this species is most decidedly not 

 brown but black. The size given by Say for inaqualu (over 0.10 inch) cer- 

 tainly agrees much better with the average size of this species, than the size 

 which he assigns to curtus (under 0.10 inch). But, as I have one specimen 

 of this species only 0.09 inch long, and as Say, likctoo many other entomolo- 

 gists, scarcely ever gives tlie number of specimens used by him in describing, 

 it is impossible to be certain that he did not describe from a single unusually 

 small specimen. After all, both of these two descriptions of Say's, like the 

 great majority of those that we have to work on in entomology, are so brief 

 and defective, that to determine to which of the two species the Grape Cur- 

 culio belongs, or whether it really belongs to either of them, is a mere scien- 

 tific conundrum. 



In such a case, the best way is to allow the leading Coleopterist of the 

 country to decide the question, and abide by his decision, so as to avoid con- 

 fusion and the multiplication of synonyms — that curse of descriptive ento- 

 mology. At ail events, I think that the Grape Curculio is now so fully and 

 preciselj^ described that — no matter what scientific name we may decide to 

 give it — it can never hereafter be mistaken for any other species. So much 

 for this entomological riddle, to solve which with certainty would require a 

 Guessing-machine of 1,000 Yankee jTOwer. 



In the perfect Beetle state the Grape Curculio will not be easily 

 identified by the inexperienced in such matters, owing to the obscure- 

 ness of its coloring, the absence of any conspicuous markings, and the 

 fact that many perfectly distinct species — several of which, however, 

 have a characteristic white scutel — resemble it strongly at first sight. 

 But almost all of these last, though they have the same general ap- 

 pearance as the Grape Curculio, yet belong to different genera, the 

 described A'orth American species of the genus (Cceliodes) being 

 very few in number. Hence our species may be recognized with tol- 

 erable certainty by a remarkable character, peculiar to the genus (Coeli- 

 odes) and not found in tb.e allied genera {Phytohius, Ceuthorhynchus, 

 Mononychus, Copturus, etc.) ; namely, the rectangular thorn or tooth 

 on the upper and outer edge of the four front shanks (tibice). For 

 convenience" sake, a greatly magnified figure of the front leg is given 

 in figure la, whore tlie reader will see at a glance the nature of this 

 distinctive character. The bristles near the tip of the shank are in 

 nature sometimes obliquely erected, as shown in the engraving, some- 

 times depressed so as to be almost invisible except under a lens of 

 very high power ; some of the legs in one and the same specimen often 



