1929] 
The Ant Genus Rhopalomastix 
101 
shape of the body, the small eyes, reduced palpi, short, stout 
appendages, the flattened, club-like antennal funiculi, the 
peculiar shape of the mandibles and the coloration, all rem- 
iniscent of similar characters in the Scolytid and Platypodid 
beetles, represent so many specialized adaptations to a bur- 
rowing life in bark and dead wood. The tribe is, therefore, 
like certain tribes of Ponerine and Formicine ants and 
certain vertebrates such as the sturgeons among fishes, the 
ostriches among birds and the monotremes among mammals, 
a group of ancient but highly specialized and conservative 
species which have managed to survive in a narrow, con- 
stant environment. 
A NOTE ON THE ASPARAGUS BEETLE, 
CRIOCERIS ASPARAGI LINN. 
In the summer of 1928 I examined some small apple trees 
planted in an asparagus bed in North East, Erie Co., Pa. Great 
numbers of the asparagus beetle, Crioceris asparagi Linn., 
were present on the asparagus, and a large number of both 
sexes were resting and crawling about on the trunks and 
branches of the apple trees. Several rows of peach trees 
were also set in the asparagus bed, but I could find no beetles 
upon them, although the insects were apparently as num- 
erous on the asparagus between the peach trees as on that 
between the apple trees. No eggs of the beetle were found 
on the apple trees, the insects apparently only resting on the 
trees. Since the beetle is strongly positively phototropic, the 
fact that the apple trees were open with their branches 
shaded very little from the sunlight, while the trunks and 
branches of the peach trees were shaded by foliage, may, 
perhaps, account for the seeming preference of the aspara- 
gus beetle for the apple trees as resting places. 
Milton F. Crowell. 
