BY THE REV. T. BLACKBURN. 413 



estimate of its value in detail, that I have proceeded upon the 

 line of regarding the re-naming of an insect that has been already 

 described and named as much less mischievous than the assignment 

 to a species, by a mistaken identification, of a name that really 

 belongs to a different insect. The former error is easily corrected 

 and will lead to nothing worse than a somewhat cumbersome 

 synonymy ; the latter is far-reaching, because it is liable to extend 

 indefinitely into the descriptions of other species which the author 

 may happen to compare with that which he has erroneously 

 supposed to be the rightful bearer of the name he uses. In this 

 memoir, therefore, I have not assigned an insect to a previously 

 existing name without feeling something like certainty that the 

 identification is correct, — in some instances I have passed over in 

 silence specimens before me because T have thought it probable, 

 but far short of certain, that a given name belongs to them, and 

 I have treated as new all species that seem distinctly more likely 

 than not (judging by published descriptions together with such 

 inspection of types as has been possible) to be distinct from those 

 previously named. In the tabulation of the characters of Chal- 

 copteri, I have enclosed in brackets all the names concerning which 

 I feel any doubt in connecting them with the insect on which I 

 suppose them to have been founded. 



It will be remembered that at the time when M. Lacordaire 

 published the " Genera des Coleopteres " and made the Amaryg- 

 mides his 45th tribe of Tenebrionidoi, 22 names of Australian 

 species attributable to the tribe had been published, all of which 

 M. Lacordaire placed in the genus Amarygmus. The " tribe " is 

 distinguished from other Tenebrionidoi by the following characters 

 in combination : — sides of the head refiexed into an ear-like 

 process above the base of the antennse, intermediate coxfe provided 

 with trochantins, tarsi hairy beneath, metasternum elongate, 

 prosternum very short in front of the coxje, anterior femora 

 unarmed. In this tribe (which is found in Asia, Africa, Australia, 

 America and Polynesia) the genus Amarygmus was founded by M. 

 Dalman in 1824 on an insect which its author called Amarygmus 

 speciosus, whose habitat he did not know and which I believe has 



