116 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 





fit 



■ ■■- 



DESCRIPTION. 



This species appears to be the American representative of D. murinus, from which it differs 

 principally in having the upper-side of the body less conspicuously mottled with whitish hairs, and 

 with having brown ones intermixed with those of the head and prothorax : the antenna? also and 

 palpi are of a dull mahogany colour, which in the last species are black, and the knob of the former 

 is considerably narrower ; underneath also the hairs on D. Dissector are not so densely planted as 

 in D. ?nurinus, and are finer, and of a purer white. 



Family BYRRHID^. Byrrhidam. 



LXIII. Genus BYRRHUS. Linn. 

 (?<+-■■ -r'~ 

 (165) 1. * Byrrhus picipes.. Pitch-legged Byrrhus. 



li. (picipes) niger, puhe obscurus, ehjtris vittis tribus obsolelis interruptis, fasciaque postica abbreviate., holosericeis atris ; 

 pedibus piceis. 



Pitch-legged Byrrhus, black, gloss obscured by hairs, elytra with three obsolete interrupted stripes, and a posterior abbre- 

 viated band, of a deep velvet-black ; legs piceous. 



Length of the body 3- lines, 



A single specimen taken in Lat. 54°. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Body black, covered with short decumbent hairs. Scutellum velvetty-black : elytra with a pair of 

 deep black interrupted stripes terminating in a transverse abbreviated posterior band of the same 

 colour : legs piceous. 



The insects of this genus are, most of them, so extremely alike in shape and sculpture, differing 

 principally, like the Humble-bees, 2 in size and the colour of the pubescence that covers them, that 

 it is difficult to say whether any individual is entitled to rank as a species, or ought only to be con- 

 sidered as a variety. That here described seems to claim a distinct name as well as most, since it 

 not only differs from the subsequent one in the colour of its pubescence, but likewise in that of its 

 legs. I at first considered it as B. ater, but it does not agree with the general descriptions of that 

 insect. 



2 Kirb. Mon. Ap. Angh i, 207. 



