﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 31 



brush of long pale hairs, and the moment these are brushed away 

 the sex is at once easily ascertained. Suppose now we pick out a 

 male for examination ! A little friction with a stiff camels hair brush 

 will soon denude the tip ot the abdomen without injuring the 

 horny parts, when we shall notice two rounded, brown, horny lobes 

 or clasps extending somewhat beyond the ultimate joint (Fig. 18, A) 

 the lobes some distance apart below, but converging until they 

 touch, above. A careful removal of the chitinous exterior of the 

 two terminal joints will further reveal to us that these lobes 

 are but parts of a somewhat complicated arrangement, admirably 

 adapted for seizing the female, and consisting chiefly of the two lobes 

 referred to, of two smaller, inferior lobes, and ot two intermediate 

 organs starting from a knotty base, the upper one curved and ending 

 in a sort of beak, the lower one more straight and ending in a small 

 cushion of contracted membrane above. 



A still more careful examination will show that the upper valves (Fig. 18, c) have 

 a rather long- and gradually narrowing stem, and that they broaden irregularly, the 

 hind border obliquing beneath and the lower border more strongly curved than the 

 upper : all the borders are thickened, the outer surface is polished and dark brown and 

 the inner surface is clothed with stiff, pale, decumbent hairs, replaced toward the pos- 

 terior portion with brown, retrose spines. (Fig. IS, A). The lower valves (Fig. 18, d) 

 have a shorter stem and are more regularly rounded : each is composed of two corne- 

 ous layers soldered and somewhat thickened at the borders, the outer piece easily frac- 

 tured and detached, pale and covered sparsely with very minute spines ; the inner one 

 more solid, darker, and covered with a dense brush of long pale hairs. The upper, 

 intermediate, curved organ reminds one from the side of a swan's neck and head 

 (Fig. 18, e) : it is yellowish and cylindrical, dilates and enlarges toward the end and 

 terminates in a narrower darker beak, the sides of the dilatation behind are curled up 

 (Fig. 18, ff) and furnished with long yellowish hairs behind, and the beak with a brush 

 of shorter hairs. The lower organ or penis (Fig. IS, /) is broader, composed of mem- 

 brane supported by two principal ribs — the upper one curved, the lower nearly straight 

 — and ends in a sponge-like, superior swelling, which in life may be considerably ex- 

 tended in the form of a tube. Both those intermediate organs play on a strong horny 

 arch which is generally retracted, but which can be raised and exserted and consider- 

 ably dilated as in Fig. IS, S.* 



If we now take a female and denude the tip of her abdomen in 

 tlie same way, we shall immediately find a quite different and far 

 more simple structure, namely, a thin vertical blade-like valve, more 

 or less produced or elongated on the upper portion, of a brown color, 

 but with a broad, slightly thickened, paler border. This valve plays 



* A careful examination of tlie genital organs of thirteen d's of this species shows very consider- 

 able vai'iation in the contour, and relative size of all these different parts — so much so as to convince 

 me, when added to my limited examinations of the same parts in other .species, that nice difl'erenccs in 

 these parts alone are of no specific value. 



