424 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
in beautiful specimens representing over a hundred undescribed species 
and was very kindly thrown open to me by the Museum authorities. — 
At the time of my visit, it was tentatively arranged in drawers accord- 
ing to families. In some cases, a study of the specimens showed the — 
need of another assignment and in consequence the finished result of 
the examination does not exactly agree with the provisional numerical 
list of species by families of Dr. Scudder. For instance, there are no 
Histeridae in the lot, though he speaks of having two. Some other 
groups run considerably below his estimate while certain families 
that he had not recognized at all are represented. I do not care to give 
out complete figures in advance of working over the still unstudied 
material that I have from other sources, but it will be worth while to 
make some remarks based upon what has been done. 
Ai examination of the Florissant species included in the chess Phy- 
tophagous families, Cerambycidae, Chrysomelidae, and Bruchidae, 
shows a curious state of affairs when compared with coincident assem- 
blages in North America of today. For the sake of showing this 
readily, I have compiled a table from published lists which will indicate, 
roughly at least, the relative specific differentiation in these families 
in several widely separated areas. I have given also the correspond- 
ing figures of the Florissant fossil fauna. | 
Actual numbers Relative frequency 
Chrys. Ceramb. | Bruch. Chrys. | Ceramb. Bruch. 
Iowa. 193 i bee. 10 100 63+ 5+ 
Cincinnati. 161 142 8 100 88+ 5- 
Dist. Columbia. 233 174 23 100 7a— 10— 
Indiana. 265 147 15 100 55+ 6-— 
Colorado. 205 113 10 100 55+ . b= 
Bayfield, Wis. 50 59 0 100 118 0 
Alaska. 12 17 0 100 142— |} 
Florissant. 26 25 16 100 96+ 62— 
This table has to do with species, not with specimens. In the sec- | 
tion devoted to relative frequencies, I have taken that of the Chryso- — 
melidae to be 100 in order to get a uniform standard of comparison. — 
It will be noted at once that the Florissant ratio between the Chryso- 
melidae and Cerambycidae is, relatively speaking, not strikingly outof — 
proportion with that shown between these families in Ohio and the 
