No. 2323. LARVAE OF THE CLERIDAE—BOVING AND CHAMPLAIN. 591 



e. CERCI, WHEN PRESENT, INARTICULATE AND IMMOVABLE.' 



This character may for purely taxonomic use be considered of 

 minor interest, only an additional character to the above-mentioned, 

 yet it separates the Cleroidea from several families or series of fami- 

 lies in which most or many or some of the members have jointed and 

 movable cerci; for instance, from most of the Choleva, Limnehius, 

 Trichopteryx types ; from many of the Adephaga types ; many of the 

 Staphylinus, Mister^ Helo'pho7'us types, and many of the Oxytelus^ 

 Tachinus^ Silpha types; from some of the Cucujidae, as the genera 

 Brontes, Dendrophagus, and P samraoecus ; and from a single species 

 Cryptophagus lycoperdi Herbst (European) of the Cryptophagidae. 



7. SPIRACLES ANNULAR OF BIFORB. FIRST THORACIC SPIRACLE PLAINLY IN PREEPIPLEURUM 



OF MESOTHORAX. 



By this character the Cleroid larvae are separated from all larvae 

 with cribriform spiracles — namely, the Buprestidae, the genus Das- 

 cillus, the Heteroceridae, and all the Lamellicornia, except Throx, 

 which has bifore spiracles. 



C. 6. I.ARVAL CHARACTERS DEFINING THE FAMILIES OF THE CLEROIDEA AND PARTICU- 

 LARLY THE FAMILY CLERIDAE. 



While the above given combination of characters equally applies 

 to all families of the series, and consequently does not classify each 

 individual family definitely, another combination of characters ful- 

 fills that requirement and serves in that way to separate every family 

 in the series from the rest. 



The characters which particularly define the Cleridae and com- 

 plete the precise determination of this family are the following: 



(a) Head porrect and exserted. 



(h) Lahnom and clypeus present. 



(c) Antennae well developed and three jointed. 



(d) Mandibles acuminate roith single apex and usuolly with 

 retinaculum; a deep groove along the cutting edge; no penicillwra. 



(e) Ventral mouthparts protracted or only slightly retracted; 

 maxillary margin of hypostonna adjacent only to cardo; postmaxil- 

 lary margin of hypostoma adjacent to gula and in some formjs de- 

 tached as a separate " paragular " structure. 



(/) Cardo m/ixillae as large or larger than stipes irmxillae. 



> When J. A. Hyslop in his important paper. The Phylogeny of the Blateridae, based 

 on larval characters (Ann. Ent. Soc. Amer., vol. 10, 1917, p. 245), writes that the larvae 

 of the Elateridae have " no cerci," he evidently does not consider inarticulate and im- 

 movable cerci as real cerci. I, however, follow Schiodte in using the term " cerci " for 

 these structures, as I am convinced that they are homologous to the Jointed, movable 

 cerci in other Coleopterous larvae. In the family Carabidae both forms of cerci occur 

 in genera intimately connected, as Notiophilvs and Elaphrus ; in fact, even in different 

 species of the same genus, as in the Carabid genus Chlaenius, one species, from North 

 Africa, deposited in the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen, has long, jointed, movable 

 cerci, while all the Danish species have stiff, straight cerci. Also in the same Crypto- 

 phagid genus Cryptophagufi, one species C. lycoperdi has jointed cerci, while C. pilosus, 

 C. pubescens and others have solid cerci. 



