I NEW SPECIES OF. THE STAPHYLINID TRIBE 



MYRMEDONIINI. 



The Myrmedoniini comprise by far the greater part of the large 

 subfamily Aleocharinae, and present a rather discouraging problem 

 to the systematist through sheer force of numbers. In the European 

 fauna probably a very large proportion of the existing species have 

 been described, though in an inconveniently scattered literature, 

 so that it is difficult to identify many of the forms, especially as 

 the types are widely diffused and in some instances probably lost. 

 In the most recent European catalogue the greater part of those 

 described are announced as synonyms of a few more accentuated 

 species, possibly to thereby cut the Gordian knot of uncertainty 

 of identification as much as anything, for many of these so-called 

 synonyms are not truly such by any means. I do not think that 

 the names printed in that catalogue under Acrotona fungi, for 

 example, are synonyms in many instances, for I have received 

 under this name from various European authorities at least four 

 unequivocally distinct though generically related species. 



Some describers have not taken pains to study their material 

 with the care exercised by such investigators as Thomson, Kraatz 

 and Rey, whose genera are nearly all valid as such, and the absence 

 of information concerning the intermesocoxal sternal pieces and 

 other important structural characters, renders it impossible to iden- 

 tify, with very few exceptions, the species published by Maklin, 

 Mannerheim, Melsheimer, Say, Erichson and many of those of 

 Bernhauer, more particularly when founded upon short comparative 

 statements concerning certain European species, positively authen- 

 tic examples of which it is almost impossible for American students 

 to obtain. As a result, even when the species of those authors 

 are described as pertaining to special genera or subgenera, there 

 are frequent mistakes in the assignments, rendering their work to 

 some extent misleading and untrustworthy. This comes about in 

 great degree from the method of mounting pursued by most of 

 the European collectors of the smaller Coleoptera, the entire undei 

 T. L. Casey, Mem. Col. I, Sept. 1910. 



