1898.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 3 



finest extant in the field he cultivated. It, with his library and 

 five thousand dollars for the care of the former, he willed to the 

 American Entomological Society. The portrait here presented 

 was the one he considered the best, and is the one he wished 

 perpetuated. His memory, will always be cherished by those 

 whom he was ever willing to aid by advice and assistance in their 

 scientific studies. An extended biography will appear later in 

 the "Transactions of the American Entomological Society." 



THE IDENTITY OF XYLEBORUS AFFINIS, WITH SOME 

 SYNONYMICAL NOTES. 



By W. F. H. Blandford, London, England. 



In his admirable paper on "The Ambrosia Beetles of the 

 United States" (U. S. Dept. Agr. Bull. 7 (N. S.), pp. 9-30) Mr. 

 H. G. Hubbard refers to a matter of some economic importance, 

 the doubtful identity of X. affinis Eichh., with the West Indian 

 " sugar-cane borer" and its distribution in North America. As 

 this has been a vexed question (see Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash, iii, 

 p. 171), and, as I have been concerned with the identification of 

 the borer, I desire briefly to reply to Mr. Hubbard's statements 

 that my determination " made from the females only cannot be 

 reliable," and that "the sugar-cane borer is very probably a 

 distinct and as yet unnamed species, the introduction of which 

 into the United States is greatly to be feared. It cannot be iden- 

 tical with X. affinis, which is common in the Southern States, 

 yet has never been known to attack sugar-cane." 



That the " sugar-cane borer" is X. affinis I have not the least 

 reason to doubt. In my original report on it, it was thus identi- 

 fied by the description alone (though that is unmistakable), but 

 the name affinis, in deference to another opinion, was there 

 treated as a synonym of the older X. perforans Woll. (kraatzi 

 Eichh.). In a later " Report on the Destruction of Beer-casks, 

 etc.," London, 1893, which Mr. Hubbard has perhaps over- 

 looked, I pointed out that the range of the typical form of X. 

 affinis is exclusively neotropical with the exception of Mauritius, 

 and that of X. perforans is chiefly palaeotropical, but that inter- 

 mediate examples were before me from the West Indies and 

 Ceylon; also that the material I had examined included typical 



