TENEBRIONID^E 73 



with all the larger collections, and in all other families as well as 

 the Tenebrionida?, and in arranging these collections into species, 

 assortments of more or less discordant individuals are usually 

 placed under a single specific name, under the assumption that the 

 exceptional forms are merely accidental variations. As the de- 

 partures from the normal or typical are particularly numerous in 

 the Tenebrionidae, it has been too hastily assumed that that family 

 is especially subject to inconstancy or plasticity affecting outline, 

 sculpture and other characters, which may be of a more definitive 

 nature elsewhere, overlooking the fact that the Tenebrionidae 

 inhabit almost exclusively dry and arid mountainous regions having 

 extremely varied environments, which alone should account for 

 the observed incongruities. A similar multiplication of closely 

 allied forms is, in greater or less degree, noticeable in most of the 

 families inhabiting such regions. As above intimated this is not 

 variation as understood in the Darwinian theory of evolution, 

 though frequently so misconstrued; it is evolution through isolation, 

 which is by far the most universal method of species forming. 

 When the process has not proceeded very far the resulting forms 

 are frequently termed incipient species; I have here designated 

 them subspecies, but it must be clearly understood that the exact 

 status of these departures from the normal is by no means certain, 

 or ascertainable through our present sources of information. 



In reviewing what has been accomplished in the taxonomy of 

 the Asidini thus far, we are forced to acknowledge a certain super- 

 ficiality of observation, which has contented itself by character- 

 izing its primary genus as one of those "polymorphous aggregates," 

 occasionally intruding themselves to vex us in our course of classi- 

 fication by way of preconceived methods, or by systems of generic 

 differentiation applicable elsewhere in the series. An exceptionally 

 erratic, and I am sure considerably overestimated, inconstancy of 

 the species has been generally maintained, as before stated, so that 

 virtually the only forms described thus far, excepting a few early 

 discriminative efforts on the part of LeConte, subsequently de- 

 graded or lost in the limbo of synonymy, are very widely separated 

 and uncorrelated species. On studying these isolated landmarks, 

 with due regard to their comparative structural characters, the 

 fact becomes evident that what have been put forward ostensibly 



