COLEOPTERA. 425 



near its posterior third, which facilitates its motion. Each testis is 

 an agglomeration of six orbicular, and as if umbilicated, spermatic 

 capsules, each one furnished with a separate, tubular duct, resem- 

 bling the kind of leaf designated by botanists as peltate or umbili- 

 cated. 



These Insects occasionally appear in such numbers that they 

 speedily destroy the leaves of considerable tracts of forest. The 

 larv^ are not less injurious in our gardens. It is commonly called 

 the Ver blanc. 



M. villosa, Oliv., lb. I, 4. Distinguished from the preceding 

 species by the club of its antennae, which consists of five leaflets 

 in the males, and four in the females; body brown, more or less 

 dark, sometimes reddish abovej three grey lines on the thorax 

 formed by down; scutellum and under part of the body furnish- 

 ed with a similar down, which forms spots on the sides of the 

 abdomen(l). 

 Now the antennal club in both sexes never presents more than 

 three leaflets. The 



Rhisotrogus, Lat. 



Closely resembles Melolontha in the general form of the body, that 

 of the labrum and tarsi; but the antennae, which consist of nine or 

 ten joints, have but three leaflets in the club(2). In 



Ceraspis, Lepel. and Serv. 



There are two small 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 corres- 

 ponding emargination in the scutellum. The antennae are composed 

 of ten joints. All the hooks of the tarsi, with the exception of the 

 anterior, are unequal; the strongest of the intermediaries is entire in 

 the male; the others, and the six in the females, are bifid. The body 

 is covered with little scales. 



(1) Add M. hololeuca, ¥\sch., Entom. Russ. Imp., II, xxviii, 3; — M. Ankeleri, 

 Ejusd., 4; — M. pilosa. Fab.; Fisch., lb., 9; — M. occidentalis. Fab., 8ic. See 

 Schoenh., Synon. Insect. I, 3, p. 162. 



(2) As it is not always an easy matter to ascertain exactly the number of joints 

 that immediately precede the club of the antennae, 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, sequinoctialis, riificornis, &ic., of Fabricius. 

 The third joint appears to be decomposed. 



Vol. III.— 3 D 



