COLEOPTERA. 23 
The alimentary canal of the Melolontha vulgaris, according to 
M. Leon Dufour—Ann. des Sc. Nat., III, p. 234—is not so long as 
that of Copris, but its parietes are shorter. The chylific ventricle is 
wholly destitute of papille, and exhibits beautiful fringes on its sur- 
face, which are formed by hepatic vessels. The small intestine is 
followed by a species of colour furnished with internal valvule under 
the form of small, triangular, and imbricated pouches, arranged in 
six longitudinal series, separated by as many muscular cords. M. 
Dufour has frequently found these pouches filled with a green, vege- 
table pulp. The structure of the biliary vessels is extremely deli- 
cate; they form multiplex flexures, and several of them, right and 
left, are furnished with little fringe-like filaments. The copulating 
armature of the male is extremely thick, very hard, terminated by 
two stout hooks, and presents an articulation near its posterior third, 
which facilitates its motion. Each testis is an agglomeration of six 
orbicular, and as if umbilicated, spermatic capsules, each one fur- 
nished with a separate, tubular duct, resembling the kind of leaf de- 
signated by botanists as pediate or wmbilicated. 
These Insects occasionally appear in such numbers that they 
speedily destroy the leaves of considerable tracts of forest. The 
larvee are not less injurious in our gardens. It is commonly called. 
the Ver blanc. 
M. villosa, Oliv., Ib. I, 4. Distinguished from the preceding 
species by the club of its antennze, which consists of five leaflets 
in the males, and four in the females; body brown, more or less 
dark, sometimes reddish above; three grey lines on the thorax 
formed by down; scutellum and under part of the body fur- 
nished with a similar down, which forms spots on the sides of 
the abdomen *. 
Now the antennal club in both sexes never presents more than 
three leaflets. The 
Rutsorrocus, Lat. 
Closely resembles Melolontha in the general form of the body, that 
of the labrum and tarsi; but the antenne, which consist of nine or 
ten joints, have but three leaflets in the club ¢. In 
Cerraspis, Lepel. and Serv. 
There are two smal! longitudinal incisures in the middle of the 
posterior margin of the thorax, the space comprised between them 
forming a tooth, the extremity of which is received into a corre- 
sponding emargination in the scutellum. The antennve are composed 
* Add M. hololeuca, Fisch., Entom. Russ. Imp., II, xxviii, 3 ;—J/. dukeleri, 
Ejusd., 4;—M. pilosa, Fab.; Fisch., Ib., 9;—M. occidentalis, Fab., &c. See 
Scheenh., Synon. Insect. I, 3, p. 162. 
+ As it is not always an easy matter to ascertain exactly the number of joints 
that immediately precede the club of the antenne, I unite the genus I had named 
Amphimalla, where those organs consist of but nine joints, to Rhisotrogus. The 
M. solstitialis, pini, serrata, fervida, atra, equinoctialis, ruficornis, &c., of Fabricius. 
The third joint appears to he decomposed, 
