INTRODUCTION. Xxiil 
lands, but, owing to the minute size and fragility of its species, very few have been 
described, beyond those of Europe, Japan, Ceylon, and N. America; the genus Xylo- 
philus, however, is represented in South America, as well as in Australia. Forty-five 
species are here recorded from Central America, all belonging to Xylophilus (in its 
wide sense) except one, the latter forming the type of a new genus; forty-four of 
these are described as new. ‘These insects chiefly inhabit the oak-woods of the high- 
lands of Mexico and Guatemala, and they are characteristic of the fauna of that region, 
becoming fewer in number southward ; they live upon the leaves and branches of the 
oaks, especially on those with large leaves. Notwithstanding their minute size, they 
are amongst the most interesting of the Central-American Heteromera. 
The family Anthicide is of world-wide distribution, and it contains an immense 
number of species. From within our limits ninety-three species, belonging to eight 
genera, are enumerated, and of the species sixty-nine are described as new. The group 
‘ Pedilides’ (from which Scraptia and Xylophilus are here excluded) includes seventeen 
species, the genera Hurygenius and Bactrocerus containing some of comparatively large 
size; Macratria, represented by eleven species, is very widely distributed. The group 
‘Anthicides’ furnishes seventy-six species, belonging to the familiar and almost 
universally distributed genera Notorus, Mecynotarsus, Tomoderus, Formicomus, and 
Anthicus—Notoxus, Tomoderus, and Anthicus with sixteen, seven, and fifty-one species 
respectively, the other two with one each. A considerable number of the Central- 
American species were described by La Ferté in his Monograph of the Family. 
Four of the N.-American genera, Stereopalpus, Tanarthrus, Nematoplus, and Pedilus 
(Corphyra), the last-ementioned with a large number of species in North America and 
one or two in Europe, are absent from the Central-American fauna, Six genera 
are common to North, Central, and South America, and two to North and Central 
America. 
The family Mordellide is of great extent, but the genera belonging to it are few in 
number, the bulk of the species belonging to Mordella and Mordellistena, both widely 
distributed, the former being especially numerous in Tropical America and Australia, 
the latter in more temperate regions. From within our limits 158 species of Mordellidee 
are enumerated, sixteen belonging to the group ‘Anaspides,’ and 142 to the group 
‘Mordellides ;? three genera and 147 species are described as new. ‘The ‘Anaspides,’ 
with four genera, are chiefly represented by Pentaria, the familiar genus Anaspis only 
just entering our northern boundary. The ‘ Mordellides’ mostly belong to Mordella 
