Excerpt from Transactions of the American Entomological Society and Proceedings of the Entomological Section of the Academy of Natural Sciences, 1887, Vol. 14 At the time of my previous essay on this genus it was supposed that the fauna of our country had been nearly exhausted and that but few new species remained to be discovered. Without any general work the collectors in various parts of the country were unable to separate their species, but it soon became evident that more attention was being given to the collection of the species by the aid given by the synopsis, imperfect as it was. In less than ten years new forms were sent me equalling in numbers those described by me as new. The more conspicuous of these were described by Dr. LeConte as already stated. In the synopsis of 1870 fifty-one species are given, one other was accidentally omitted. Of these six are now considered synonyms. The present essay enumerates eighty-two, nearly double the number. Of these all are known to me in nature excepting cadaverinus and guttatus, and seventy-eight are represented in my cabinet. Having thus about as complete a series as usually falls to the lot of any one it has been deemed expedient to review the whole material and bring together fuller descriptions in one paper. As has been my custom for some years the synonymy and bibliography have been placed as a concluding portion and made complete so far as concerns our fauna, the greater part of the synonymy of European species being omitted. In these latter, besides the original citation, I have added references to more modern and better descriptions, to which the student is referred for fuller details of variations than I have thought necessary to give. The great increase in the number of species has required some modification of the arrangement made use of in my previous papers, although I have endeavored to follow the lines proposed by Erichson as far as our species would permit. It has seemed desirable to adopt a course intermediate between that of Erichson and Mulsant, and to recognize certain primary divisions to be called subgenera, without, however, going to the extreme of the latter author. In our fauna four subgenera are recognized - Teuchestes, Colobopterus, Diapterna and Aphodius (proper), the first two being represented by introduced European species; the third is peculiar to our fauna, and all have the large scutellum. Aphodius contains all the species with small scutellum, and has been greatly subdivided, but with our material we must either disregard the names proposed for these divisions or nearly double the number at present existing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.