Epicaerus (Epicaerus) fallax Boheman 1842

Hab.MEXICO¹ (Sallé; coll. Sharp).

To the locality MEXICO, add:—Tampico in Tamaulipas (Schwarz, in U. S. Nat. Mus.).

This insect is extremely similar to some of the varieties of E. mexicanus; but the female can be distinguished by a glance at the peculiar form of the apical portion of the wing-cases, the sutural part projecting backwards just before the declivity in an abrupt manner instead of being broadly rounded. The male is much more likely to be passed over as being E. mexicanus, but this sex of E. fallax may be satisfactorily determined by the following slight peculiarities: the thorax is not rounded at the sides and constricted behind, but straight, and from the middle to the front gently narrowed; its surface is more even than that of E. mexicanus, the only inequality that can be detected being a slight channel along the middle of the basal half; the outline of the front margin of the thorax at the sides is more sinuate, or, in other words, rudimentary ocular lobes are undoubtedly present. E. fallax is apparently a rare insect, as the collections received by our editors contain only a pair of the species, and there are two pairs of old specimens in my own collection; these were all named E. fallax—those in my own collection on the authority of Jekel

—and they agree with the type of the species sent me by Dr. Aurivillius.

No definite locality in Mexico was known for E. fallax, but it is not likely that all the examples of it in collections came from so far north as Tamaulipas, whence I have recently seen a good series belonging to the U. S. National Museum. This species is readily separable, in both sexes, from E. mexicanus by the characters given by Dr. Sharp. The insect labelled E. fallax in the Sommer collection is a large female of Pseudhypoptus parcus, Fåhr.