232 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



importation and not native. It may be put down as a truism 

 beyond cavil, that every endemic American species of Coleo- 

 ptera is distinct from any European species, however closely 

 they may approximate in general form. The early represen- 

 tatives of American or European species, migrating through 

 land connections by way of Alaska or Greenland, have all 

 been modified in such degree as to be specifically distinct at 

 the present day. The occurrence of recent importations is 

 usually sporadic and in the neighborhood of ports of entry 

 and very few recent importations to either continent from the 

 other have become widely diffused, except some generally de- 

 structive species of unusual adaptability and a relatively 

 limited number that are well known to be cosmopolitan and 

 sp continually subject to transportation throughout the world 

 in commercial ships. A recognition of this truth, which can be 

 easily demonstrated to any careful observer, would have saved 

 many harmful and misleading errors in our recent faunistic 

 catalogues, notably that of the late Dr. Hamilton on the 

 Coleoptera common to Europe and America, which is in con- 

 siderable part erroneous. In a conversation with Mr. S. H. 

 Scudder, of Cambridge, Mass., I was informed that the facts 

 stated above in regard to the Coleoptera were equally true 

 even of the Macrolepidoptera. 



Chitalia Shp. 



This remarkable genus was founded by Dr. Sharp upon a 

 few species belonging to the Sonoran province of the nearctic 

 fauna of Mexico, but it proves to be one of the most widely 

 disseminated types of North American Falagriae. It is also 

 completely isolated in its structural characters as previously 

 stated. The small, clearly separated, acutely elevated 

 granules of the scutellum are frequently parted along the 

 middle, giving rise to the channel mentioned by Le- 

 Conte in describing Falagria scutellaris^ but there is 

 seldom any trace of a true indentation of the scutellar 

 plate, and the character is moreover rather inconstant, 

 except in those species in which it is strongly devel- 

 oped; in bilobata, for example, a very narrow parting may 



