NOTES ON NEW AND RARE LOCAL BEETLES. 409 



and Stephens' bicolor to cenea^ Schall., but in the synonymy of 

 bicoloi% Gyll., he brings in again Stephens' bicolor in part, and 

 he considers Charpentier's scutellaris, taken in Hungary, and 

 described in Horse Ent. Ross. (1825), p. 244, to be merely 

 a variety of Gyllenhal's bicolor. Lacordaire had retained 

 Charpentier's insect as a distinct species. In the same volume 

 of " L'Abeille," p. 136, M. Bedel published three notes of 

 corrections on his monograph, and in the second note refers 

 to Mr, Waterhouse's examination of the Stephensian speci- 

 mens of the genus Triplax. He says that Mr. Waterhouse 

 had stated, in an article published in the Transactions of the 

 Entomological Society of London, 3rd series, 1862-64, p. 129, 

 that of the three insects standing under the name of bicolor in 

 the Stephens collection two were cenea (and these were marked 

 Marsham types), and that the third specimen was ruficollis, 

 Lac, =: lacordairei, Crotch, and that this latter had by a 

 strange confusion served as a model for fig. 4, plate 17, vol. iii., 

 of the " Illustrations," to which had been attached the name 

 bicolor. It will be seen, therefore, that as far back as 1868-9 

 a Continental authority of high standing had abandoned the 

 notion that Gyllenhal's insect was the same as Marsham's 

 and Stephens', the evidence against such an idea being over- 

 whelming, and yet, strangely enough, Ganglbauer, in " Die 

 Kafer von Mitteleuropa," has gone back again, and insists 

 that Stephens' insect is the same as Gyllenhal's, though he 

 rightly enough ascribes Marsham's insect to ceiiea, Schaller. 



Mr. Crotch, in " The Entomologist," 1870, vol. v., p. 7, 

 pubUshed some notes, based upon Bedel's " Monograph," on 

 the genus Triplax. He there introduced the name gyllenhali 

 for bicolor, Gyll., and, strictly speaking, Crotch's name ought 

 to be adopted for the insect we are dealing with ; as, since 

 Marsham had already used the name of bicolor for another 

 species, Gyllenhal's name, according to the strict law of 

 priority, ought to drop ; but as nearly all the European 

 authorities seem to have made up their minds definitely to 

 keep to the name of bicolor, Gyll., for this insect, it seems 

 preferable, for the present at any rate, to retain that name. 



