370 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
OHJSBRY. I.RAYKS. 
country, it is a matter of no small moment that its scientific name 
be correctly ascertained and well settled. Some confusion at pre¬ 
sent exists upon this point, among diiferent writers. This discre¬ 
pancy has chiefly arisen from a most disingenuous statement made 
by Dr. Harris, in both editions of his Treatise, page 28 and 26, 
where he Says the genus Pkyllophaga was “ proposed by me in 
1826. Dejean subsequently called this genus Ancylonycha .” 
Now the number of the Massachusetts Agricultural Repository in 
which Dr. Harris’s essay appears (vol x, pages 1—12) bears the 
date of July 1827! and the name Phyllophaga is there merely 
suggested for this insect and its kindred, without any statement of 
the marks by which the group thus designated can be recognized. 
In this same year (1827) also, a distinguished British entomologist, 
Rev. F. W. Hope, published the first part of his Coleopterist’s 
Manual, in which this same group is distinctly set apart and 
clearly characterized, and the name Lachno-sterna (i. e. hairy- 
breasted) is given it. This name, therefore, is evidently the one 
which the established rules of scientific nomenclature will give to 
the genus to which our insect belongs. Dejean’s name Ancylonycha 
mentioned above by Dr. Harris, not having been proposed until 
several years later. 
This insect has hitherto been generally entered under the spe¬ 
cific name queicina , but Dr. LeConte has recently ascertained that 
nearly ten years before Weber bestowed this name upon it, Froli- 
lich, a German naturalist, had in the year 1792 described it under 
the name fusca. 
We thus reach the conclusion that Lachnostema fusca , a term 
meaning blackish hairy breast, is the correct technical name ol 
our common May beetle, which has so often hitherto been called 
Phyllophaga quercina in our agricultural periodicals. 
The May beetle is a glossy thick-bodied insect, 0.80 to 0.90 long and about 
half as broad. It varies in color from chestnut-brown to black, and this differ¬ 
ence of color does not appear to bo owing to age, for it is found in newly hatched 
beetles before they have come forth from the ground. The head is commonly 
darker colored than the thorax, is closely punctured, and its anterior edgo is 
thin and turned upward, with a concavity but not an angular notch in its 
middle. The feelers and antennae are somewhat paler yellow than the legs, 
which are polished tawny yellow. The punctures upon the thorax are coarse 
and farther apart than on the head. The wing covers though glossy and 
