481 



A REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN SPECIES OP 

 BOLBOCERAS, WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW 

 SPECIES. 



(CoLEOPTERA, Fam. Scarabceidce.) 



By Rev. T. Blackburn, B.A., Corresponding Member. 



I attempt a revision of the Australian species of this genus 

 only with much hesitation on account of the impossibility of 

 dealing with them in a manner that can be treated as final or 

 authoritative. The published descriptions of these insects are in 

 many instances perfectly useless, and the types are widely dispersed 

 over the world. The largest assembly of types is probably that 

 in the Australian Museum at Sydney, and if there were anyone 

 there working on the Coleoptera of that group he would probably 

 have the best opportunities possible of doing successfully what 

 I am now attempting. But so far as I can ascertain there is no 

 such worker to be found, and, therefore, I am disposed to attempt 

 the task, though with the knowledge that I cannot hope to accom- 

 plish more than the publication for the first time in a connected 

 form of all that can be definitely ascertained by a writer outside 

 Sydney as to the Australian species of the genus. This may at 

 any rate form a treatise that may provoke those who have the 

 means of procuring the information necessary for correcting it 

 to do so; and so something more satisfactory may be brought 

 within measurable distance. 



These insects, disregarding their sexual characters, are 

 extremely closely allied inter se, but on the other hand there are 

 few if any genera in which strongly marked sexual characters are 

 more frequent. Nevertheless there is, so far as I can ascertain, 

 no external character that is invariably distinctive of either sex; 

 with the result that it is a frequent experience to meet with 



