40 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XVI 



anterior margin are present and extend into the separation almost 

 to the mesothorax. 



On" each half of the tergtim near the cephalomesal angles, 

 there is a short and rather deep punctured depression. These 

 are represented in the illustration by the dotted lines. Slightly 

 caudad of the right depression is the small, smooth, impunctate 

 area, representing the short impunctate median line found in the 

 normal beetle. No trace of it is found on the left side. 



The writer can make no explanation of this division of the 

 prothorax, but wishes to call attention to the fact that an ex- 

 amination of a normal specimen of the species reveals on the 

 ental surface of the protergum an arrangement of the points of 

 origin of the large, conical shaped, dorsoventral muscles which, 

 in a measure, correspond, on their mesal points of origin, to the 

 general outline of the mesal margins of the divided protergum. 

 Can muscular stress have played an important role in causing 

 this division? A second question naturally follows the first. 

 What is the significance of the median longitudinal impunctate 

 line so common in many insects? May it not represent the 

 fusion of sutures in some ancestral form and may not the case 

 in hand be a reversion to type? 



A NEW LIXUS FROM NEW JERSEY. 



IBy H. C. Fall, Tyngsboro, Mass. & 



Lixus bischofR n. sp. 



Form elongate, parallel, but rather stout ; black, lustre 

 dull, surface thinly clothed, as in concavus, with very short 

 appressed ashy white squamiform hairs, which are feebly 

 and finely mottled on the elytra, and become abruptly denser 

 at the sides of the prothorax. Antennae ($ ?) inserted 

 slightly behind the apical two-fifths of the beak, 2d funicular 

 joint slightly longer and just perceptibly narrower than the 

 first, equal in length to the next two ; club rather stout, equal 

 in length to the preceding four joints, and scarcely longer 

 than half the funicle. Beak as long as the prothorax, cylin- 

 drical, moderately arcuate, finely feebly punctate apically, 



