NEARCTIC BEETLES MELIGETHES — EASTON 97 



staff, Chiricahua Mountains. Montana: Assinniboine, Helena, Yel- 

 lowstone. Wyoming: Delano Ranch in Platte County. Colorado: 

 Antonito, Gunnison, Lincoln County, Mount Lookout, Leavenworth 

 Valley, Buena Vista, Denver, Garland, Mesa, Veta Pass, De Beque, 

 Colorado Springs, Idaho Springs. New Mexico: Santa Fe, Las 

 Vegas, Hot Springs, Magdalena. Nebraska: Pine Ridge, Plum 

 Creek, West Point. Kansas: Douglas County, Lawrence. 



Many of the records of American authors quoted above are based 

 on misdeterminations, notably of M. simplipes Easton, and are there- 

 fore open to doubt. My own experience suggests that rufimanus 

 does not occur at all in the Eastern States, where seminulum LeConte 

 and simplipes Easton are the sole representatives of the genus, but 

 that its distribution covers a wide area throughout the Western and 

 Midwestern States, extending into Canada in the north, and probably 

 into Mexico in the south. 



Meligethes simplipes Easton 



Since describing this species from Ohio in 1947 a greater experience 

 has shown it to be a not uncommon species widely distributed through- 

 out m^any of the adjacent States. In collections M. simplipes Easton 

 has generall}^ been determined as M. brassicae Scopoli, an established 

 synonym of M. aeneus Fabricius, and sometimes as M. mutatus 

 Harold. In these guises there is no doubt that it has been responsible 

 in large part for the confusion that has existed regarding the relation- 

 ship of M. mutatus Harold and M. aeneus Fabricius, a subject that 

 has been discussed in some detail above. Thus, in the collections of 

 the British Museum, standhig above the name M. brassicae Scopoli 

 are six specimens from the W. S. Blatchley collection taken in Marion 

 County, Indiana, one bearing the date June 1, 1928, and another 

 labeled ''Meligethes brassicae Scop. W. S. Blatchley det." These 

 beetles, as also two of like derivation in the collection of New York 

 State College of Agriculture, I find not only to be amply distinct from 

 both Al. aeneus Fabricius (= brassicae Scopoli) and rufmanus LeConte, 

 but to agree exactly with M. simplipes Easton, and it is clear that 

 Blatchley 's record of "M. aeneus" in his "Coleoptera of Indiana" 

 must be regarded as referring to this species. 



The characters by which M. simplipes Easton ma,y be distinguished 

 from M. rufimanus LeConte (= mutatus Harold) were considered at 

 the time of its original description (Easton, 1947). While the dis- 

 tinction between typical specimens of the two species is at once 

 obvious, a small percentage of specimens exhibits a sufficient variation 

 as to render diagnosis difficult, especially as regards size and proximity 

 of punctuation. In the majority of these specimens, however, an 



