218 
Psyche 
[December 
THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF RYBAXIS 
By H. C. Fall, 
Tyngsboro, Mass. 
The little group Rybaxis, call it genus or subgenus as you 
prefer, was established by Saulcy in 1874 to contain a few spe- 
cies definitely separable from Bryaxis by the presence of a sharply 
impressed biarcuate groove connecting the lateral pronotal fovese, 
and a deep submarginal stria on the vertical flanks of the elytra. 
At that time two species only were known in our fauna which 
possessed the characters of the new genus, viz. — Bryaxis con- 
juncta described by Le Conte in 1850, and B. clavata described 
by Brendel in 1865 as a supposed “northern climatical form of 
conjuncta, but declared by him the year following to be a dis- 
tinct species, differing from conjunda in certain sexual characters, 
notably in having the anterior trochanters armed with a short 
sharp spine, the same being unarmed in conjuncta. In the 
Crotch Check List of 1873 Dr. Horn changed the name clavata 
to brendelii, the former being preoccupied. 
On page xli of the Horn Bibliography by Henshaw (Trans. 
Am. Ent. Soc. 1898) there is a synonymical note from Mr. 
Schwarz pointing out that while Dr. Brendel had discovered that 
there were two distinct species included under the name Bryaxis 
conjuncta, one with the front trochanters of the male spined, the 
other not, through a failure to read Le Conte’s original descrip- 
tion Brendel in describing his clavata with spined trochanters 
succeeded only in rediscribing Le Conte’s conjuncta, thus leaving 
without a name the species with simple male trochanters which 
he had wrongly assumed to be the true conjuncta. Oddly enough 
Le Conte himself, apparently completely forgetful of his original 
description, follows Brendel’s lead and in his table of the genus 
in the “Transactions” of 1880 uses the name conjuncta for the 
species with simple male trochanters. 
The Schwarz note of nearly thirty years ago however seems 
to have been generally overlooked and the error there pointed 
out still awaits adjustment; moreover some recent study by the 
