Dec, 1012 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 25 



species plentiful in a chicken coop. Commenting upon this fact 

 to Mr. 0. Aakerson of Winfield, L. I., I learned that the 

 bug had troubled hiin in the same way for the last five 

 years. When I investigated the abandoned coop I found thou- 

 sands of individuals in all the cracks and crevices and under the 

 peeling layers of whitewash, and by passing the mouth of an open 

 vial along the under side of one of the roof beams about fifty were 

 gathered in. 



On Metachroma laterale, pallidum and laevicoUe (Coleop.). 



By Charles Schaeffer, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



While collecting at Central Park, Long Island, this year in 

 company with my friend William T. Davis, a considerable number 

 of what I then thought to be one variable species of Metachroma 

 could have been obtained by beating branches of Quercus mary- 

 landica. However, only some twenty or thirty specimens were 

 bottled, mostly selected as representing all possible color variations. 



Examining the series at home, after they were mounted, I was 

 surprised to find that, according to the descriptions, they were re- 

 ferable to the three species mentioned above. The two species, 

 laterale and pallidum, however, do not differ from each other except 

 that the former has a large, black spot laterally at the middle of 

 each elytron while pallidum is entirely pale. Suspecting that 

 laevicoUe was only an extreme smooth form of these, I looked for 

 intermediates but even with additional material obtained on a 

 second trip, I did not succeed in finding any. 



Crotch and Horn describe laevicoUe as uniformly pale, and I 

 have not observed it mentioned elsewhere that this species is 

 variable in coloration, ranging from thorax and elytra uniformly 

 pale to almost entirely black as shown by my long series. 



Besides the difference in sculpture of the thorax and head the 

 origin or the starting point of the black color is also different in 

 laevicoUe and laterale. The black color in laevicoUe starts always at 

 the suture and spreads gradually towards the lateral margins and 

 nearly to apex, while in laterale the black color begins to show first 

 at the middle of lateral margins of elytra. The spot in this form 

 may be small or large but never seems to become large enough to 

 cover almost the entire elytra as in some specimens of laevicoUe. 



