SHORT NOTES ON COLEOPTERA

Extract

Hololepta fossularis Say. The habitatio of this insect is usually under locust bark in the first stages of decay, a fact so well known that collectors would look for it in no other place. But last summer I found a number of them under the bark of Ulmus fulva (slippery elm), the odor of which in the same state of decomposition is as rank as that of Robinia. With them were several H. lucida. The individuals of these two species so approximate as in some examples to be scarcely separable; and indeed there is a reasonable doubt whether any of them are instinctively conscious of being specifically different.