Forty-fourth Report on the State Museum 



Fd-bricius, but I can find no notice in any of the works that I possess 

 o^any European Bruchus fabce, and several of my eastern correspond- 

 ents who have access to large libraries have been unable to find any 

 description or allusion to a species by that name. Dr. LeConte has 

 given it the MS. name of varicornis, but as his description will not 

 appear perhaps for years to come and as no comprehensive description 

 ^s yet been published, I have deemed it advisable to dispel in a 

 measure the confusion that surrounds the nomenclature of this species. 

 There is need of a description of so injurious a species; and as fabce is 

 not preoccupied, I adopt the name because it is entirely appropriate, 

 and because it is more easily rendered into terse popular language 

 tWkn varicornis. 



The Bruchus fabae of Dr. Fitch. 



The origin of the name " B. fabce " attached to the insect " in Eastern 

 collections," for which Professor Riley was unable to account, finds full 

 explanation in the two following MS. notes, and a long-time overlooked 

 published letter of Dr. Fitch. The notes are extracted from one of 

 the many manuscript volumes left by Dr. Fitch, which subsequently 

 ^me into the possession of Dr. A. E. Foote, of Philadelphia. Not 

 l^jUg ago they were purchased by Mr. S. H. Scudder, and by him pre- 

 sented to the Boston Society of Natural History. The notes have 

 Mndly been transcribed for me for present use by Mr. Samuel Hen- 

 Sj^aw, of the Boston Society, from whom I also received some months 

 ago a copy of the letter referred to in the first note, printed in slip form 

 (10x28 cm.), several copies of which were found among the MSS. 

 ^'In his notes on Bruchus fabce, Dr. Fitch had written as follows : 



j^-In August, 1860, I received from W. R. Staples, Secretary of the 

 n,. I. Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, a small 

 parcel of beans infested by insects, the result of my examination of 

 which I communicated to him in the following letter, which was pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Society for that year, page 62, this 

 yplume having been issued in February, 1861. He stated in the 

 accompanying communication that the stored beans in the city of 

 Providence were quite generally preyed upon by this insect. I sub- 

 sequently learned that it was common in and around the city of New 

 "59rk and other places along the seaboard. And from the complaints 

 B^de by prisoners in the late civil war of the wormy beans furnished 

 them for food and which were so loathsome to them, I infer this insect 

 1^, be common through the southern states. Mr. Riley having 

 received specimens from Massachusetts ticketed as being the Bruchus 

 Fabce of Fab., and finding no such name in the works of Fab., describes 

 it as a new species under this name in his 3d Report, p. 52. 



^■The letter above referred to, and printed in the Transactions cited, 



atld as a separate slip, is the following : 



The Bean-Weevil. 



W. R. Staples, Secretary of the Rhode Island Society for the Encourage- 

 . ment of Domestic Industry : 



Dear Sir. — Whoever inspects beans infested with the insect which 

 you send me, will at once infer that this depredator is closely akin to 



