BY REV. T. BLACKBURN. 



161 



but departs from that form by either (a) having its apex mucron- 

 ate, or (b) having a notch or arcuate concavity about its middle, 

 or (c) having both the above characters. There are a few species 

 in which this prothoracic peculiarity is very feeble, the unevenness 

 of lateral outline being only a slight median sinuosity, and those 

 species are very closely allied to some of the species in Group ii. 

 But in an enormous genus such as Paropsis subdivision is impos- 

 sible unless some character be applied with a rigour that more or 

 less runs counter to natural order in separating species that 

 apart from that character might be placed side by side. I 

 believe that the system and subdivision I have adopted will be 

 found to traverse obvious affinities less frequently than any other 

 system that could be suggested. 



In this present Group there is only one species in which the 

 sculpture of the elytra approaches the type of regular seriate punc- 

 turation, viz., P. aspera^ Chp., — which its author placed in his 

 fourth '-jGroupe," my third — where (the form of its prothorax 

 being disregarded) it certainly seems more at home; but as the 

 apical angles of its prothorax are very strongly mucronate it must 

 be a highly isolated species wherever placed. 



The species of this group are insects of firm texture and non- 

 metallic colouring, most of them of comparatively large size and 

 less liable to change colour after death than are the members of 

 some other groups. Many of the species are very closely allied, 

 inter se, but on the whole distinguishable by more definite 

 characters than are those of the more numerous groups. The diffi- 

 culty of identifying the insects referred to in published descrip- 

 tions is, however, very great, as there is scarcely a species known 

 to me in which the colours are not variable to the utmost extent, 

 and in the majority of the existing descriptions colour is treated 

 as a prominent character. 



The only colour-character on which I have ventured to place 



any confident reliance is the colour of the under surface. In some 



species the under surface is of a deep shining black which varies 



by being interspersed with clearly contrasted yellow. In the rest 



of the species the under surface is red-testaceous or brown, vary- 

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