STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
803 
OAK. LIUBS. 
The seutel also is densely covered and gray from these hairs. The surface, 
above, is occupied by numerous coarse round punctures, those on the 
thorax being of the same size with those on the wing-covers, but more 
crowded, many of them running into each other. Towards the tips of the 
wing-covers these punctures become perceptibly smaller. Among the 
punctures of the thorax, slightly back of its center, a smooth shining 
callous-like spot or short line may be discerned ; and sometimes, forward 
of this, on each side of the middle a small dot, smooth and shining, 
is very distinct, such specimens appearing to constitute the species named 
rusticu.ru by Dr. Le Conte. In some specimens, also, on the wing covers, 
sometimes one, more often two, slightly elevated, smooth longitudinal 
lines are very manifest, these appearing to be the oblitum of the same 
author. What I regard as the females of this species, although as yet I 
have bred no specimens of this kind from oak limbs, differ from the pre¬ 
ceding in being of a slightly broader and more robust aspect, with the 
back more flattened, and the wing covers of a lighter brown color, 
and sometimes as pale as the antennae. And in these no smooth callous- 
like spot back of the center of the thorax is to be perceived, in the few 
specimens which I at present have in my hands. 
Although Prof. Peck and Dr. Harris regard this insect as different from 
any thing described by Fabricius, our latest authorities place it as a syno¬ 
nym of the Slenocarus villosus of this author. There, however, is nothing in 
the original description of the species thus named, to indicate it as being this 
more than any one of a half dozen other insects of our country. The 
villosus is merely said to be a slender medium-sized Carolina species of a 
dull or dusky color, slightly clad with ash-gray down, its thorax unarmed 
and its wing covers two-toothed. We And nothing in this description 
whereby it can be decided to which particular one of several species it 
refers. And if the name villosus ought not to be wholly rejected in con¬ 
sequence of this uncertainty, I am disposed to regard it as belonging to a 
southern species, the same, I suppose, which Dr. Le Conte places under this 
name, which is larger in size, and with the punctures of its thorax much 
more flue dense and confused than in our Oak pruuer. 
This insect is co-generic with a West India species named by Fabricius 
S/eiwcorus irroratus , for specimens of which aud many other interesting 
species from the same locality, I am indebted to F. J. Barnard, Esq., of 
Albany. In the year 1833 M. Serville proposed a new genus, named 
i'/aphidion (Ann. Soc. But. France, ii., 540) for the reception of this 
species. From the remarks of llev. F. W. Hope in Trans. Loudon Zool. 
boc., iii., 1ST, it might be inferred that a genus named Cycliopleurus, 
founded by him upon this same West India species, had been published in 
the Proceedings of said Society, May, 1833, a few months anterior to Scr- 
'ille. But though an abstract of Mr. Hope’s paper was given in the place 
referred to, this genus is not noticed therein, and did not appear in print 
till the first volume of the Transactions of the Society was published, two 
