TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. VOLUME XXXV. REVISION OF THE SPECIES OF DIPLOTAXIS OF THE UNITED STATES. BY H. C. FALL. The genus Diplotaxis was erected by Kirby in 1840, tristis being the type species. Only three species of our fauna de-scribed by earlier authors are referable to the genus, viz. : the Mololontha liberta of Germar (1S23), and the M. sordida and M. frondicola of Say (1825). A little later Blanchard (1850) and Burmeister (1855) described a considerable num-ber of species from both the United States and Mexico, some of them being identical with previously described forms. In 1856 LeConte published his Synopsis of the Melolonthidae of the United States, in which twenty-nine species are recognized, twenty-three of which are described as new, while five of the species of Blanchard and Burmeister are listed as unrecognized. This paper still furnishes the basis for the arrangement of species in our present lists, as, aside from some isolated de-scriptions, the genus has received no attention from our systematists of later years. That such attention is much needed has for some time been apparent, for with the gradual accumulation of material from the West, especially from our Southwestern border region, the new forms have become as numerous as those previously described, and the total number of species does not fall far short of being as great as in Lachno sterna. TRANS. AM. ENT. SOC. XXXV. (1) JANUARY, 1909.
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