BY REV. T. BLACKBURN. 163 



specimens can be spared for destruction. Unfortunately he never 

 published a second part of his work. There are some errors in 

 what he published which the quasi- types of Marsham's Paropses 

 (referred to above) have enabled me to detect and which will be 

 found noted in the following pages. Of the 20 species described 

 by Baly, seventeen belong to my Group i., and the other three to 

 my Group ii. 



The species not distinguished by an elytral pattern and having 

 their prothorax similar in form are as a rule closely allied inter 

 se, and their specific difference seems to consist chiefly m their 

 form (more or less elongate or more or less convex) and their 

 sculpture (more or less strong or more or less close). Such 

 differences are not easy to formulate in language precise enough 

 to be useful in a tabulation, but where they really are the essen- 

 tial differences it is necessary to make the attempt to express 

 them clearly, which I have done in the present instance by com- 

 paring the degree of convexity, (fee, with the same in some other 

 species, choosing as the standards of comparison only well-known 

 and more or less common species. I am, of course, not forgetful 

 of the fact that differences of convexity and even of sculpture 

 are very frequently sexual, and therefore when T characterise a 

 Paropsis as (e.g.) more or less convex than some other species, I 

 mean "more or less convex than the corresponding sex (the male 

 than the male, the female than the female) of that species." 



One other of the characters that I have relied upon in group- 

 ing the species of this aggregate seems to call for explanation. I 

 have contrasted two types of elytral puncturation as "acervate" 

 and " evenly spaced or nearly so." The puncturation which I 

 have called "acervate" is not invariably in "clusters" (strictly so 

 called), but in some species runs in short usually oblique lines, 

 yet in such fashion that the interspaces between these lines of 

 punctures are of considerably different size; while the punctura- 

 tion that I have called " evenly spaced or nearly so " does not, 

 or scarcely, run in lines, and the interspaces of the punctures are 

 all very similar, hiter se. 



With these explanations I cherish the hope that, notwith- 

 standing the close resemblance of these species, inter se, it will be 



