This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1908 Excerpt: ... PROCEEDINGS OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Vol. XI, No. 2, Pp. 47-178 April 28, 1909 STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN BUPRESTID. By Thos. L. Casey. It would seem that but few sections of the Coleoptera have been so neglected, or so superficially investigated with a view to scientifically defining and grouping the genera, as the Buprestidae. The conspicuous and brilliant metallic coloration prevailing among the species, doubdess led the early authors to define the majority of them from their salient external characters alone, and generally in few words, so that the determinative literature is inadequate and frequently misleading. These remarks apply, however, more especially to the first few groups of genera as they occur in America, for some careful and undoubtedly useful work has been accomplished in subsequent parts of our series, for example in the genera Chrysobothris, Acmmodera and Agrilus by Dr. G. H. Horn and Mr. H. C. Fall. Alluding to the neglect during the past fifty years of that part of the family which forms the subject of the present essay, it will suffice to state that only a comparatively small proportion of the specific and subspecific forms in our cabinets have been denned, that the genus Chalcophora has been constituted in our lists during all this time of two notably distinct genera, that the three species assigned to Hippomelas belong in reality to three different genera, two of which are not at all closely allied, and, finally, that Buprestis is separated from the earlier genera by Dicerca and PcecUonota, which differ conspicuously in antennal structure as will appear below. This general lack of interest in the taxonomic treatment of the family is apparently due, in some measure at least, to actual absence of structural plasticity, the e...