MR. CURTIS ON HYPOCEPHALUS, A GENUS OF COLEOPTERA. 233 
phant, are evidently for grinding or mastication, the jaws by themselves being useless in 
that respect, yet I expect they are capable of lateral motion. 
Having shown that this pentamerous beetle agrees with the Lamellicornes in various 
ways, whilst it disagrees with the Zongicornes in many, I will assign my reasons for asso- 
ciating Hypocephalus with the former Family, even were the claims balanced, excepting 
the tarsi. 
I confess that I have still so good an opinion of the tarsal system of Geoffroy, and 
adopted by Latreille, as a basis for the primary divisions of the Coleoptera, that I do not 
hesitate to challenge any systematist to exhibit another, better, more useful, or less 
objectionable*. Itis usual to term this an artificial System, but that which is based upon 
anatomy is no more artificial in Entomology than in any other Class of animals, and the 
skeletons of Insects being external, the joints of the legs and feet are as purely anatomical 
as the bones (the femur, tibiæ, &c.) of any quadruped or bird. In pursuing the tarsal 
system, no one will attempt to deny meeting with many exceptions to the general type of 
form, but these occur in the minuter groups, which often seem to become feeble in their 
development, and depart from the perfection, if I may so term it, exhibited by the large 
and typical species. In the Family Staphylinide, for example, the number of joints 
varies in the feet, but this is confined to the minute speciest, and to an amount so small, 
that it cannot justify our abandoning so valuable and tangible a character for dividing 
the enormous Order Coleoptera. And when we examine the large and perfectly-deve- 
loped examples, which must decide the position of a Family, we find the Staphylinide an 
undoubted pentamerous groupi; the larve also in this instance assimilating so well 
with those of the Carabide, that it is at present difficult to decide to which family they 
belong. . 
My experience teaches me, that as regards aflinities, animals do not descend in their 
claims of relationship, viz. If the types of a group exhibit certain perfections in their 
structure, that group has no absolute affinity to a family typically less perfect, and cannot 
therefore be transferred to that inferior group, without doing a violence to nature's laws. 
For instance, it would be unnatural to remove a member of the Family Carabide, with 
its 6 palpi, to any other less perfect, however modified the tarsi might be, or however 
strange its contour$. On the same principle, its pentamerous character excludes it from 
entering the lines of the Heteromera, or any other of the great sections. 
This is my reason for maintaining that Hypocephalus cannot be admitted amongst the 
Longicornes: it must find a place amongst the Pentamera. It may be affirmed that the 
Tetramera are pentamerous,—this I cannot admit; the portion considered as a 4th or extra 
joint, even when articulated, is not the analogue of the 4th joint in the Pentamera; it is 
* Consult Latreille’s Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum, and that admirable volume, the Considérations Générales. 
+ Vide Curtis's Brit. Ent. Homalota, pl. 514; Falagria, pl. 462; Bledius, pl. 143. 
i See the dissections in the Brit. Ent. of Emus hirtus, pl: 534, and of 17 other genera of the same family, all of 
which are pentamerous; and it is deserving of remark, that generally when the number of joints is reduced, they fail 
in the anterior feet: vide Phytosus, pl. 718. 
$ Were it not for the number of the palpi, who could imagine that Mormolyce and Omonhron were types of the 
same family—and that Carabide? | ; 
VOL. XXI. 21 
