202 fJ'Jiy. 



NOTES ON THE DRITISn SrECIES of the GENUS IIETEEOCERUS, FAB. 

 BY REV. CANON FOWLER, M.A., F.L.S. 



Since the publication of Vol. Ill of my work on the British 

 CoJcoptcra, two important papers have been published on this much 

 neglected and very obscure genus : — " The species of Heterocerus of 

 Boreal America," by Dr. Horn (Trans. Amer. Ent. Sec, xvii, January, 

 1890), and the " Bestimmungstabelle der Heterocerus Europas und der 

 angrenzenden Gebiete," by Herr A. Kuwert (Verhandlungen der 

 kaiserlich-kouiglichen zoologisch-botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 

 p. 517, 1890) ; a description of a new species described by Herr Kuwert 

 in his paper, H. hritannicus, together with notes on other species, will 

 be found on page 132 of this volume. Since writing these I have had 

 further correspondence with Herr Kuwert, who, in his last letter, ex- 

 presses regret that he had not more specimens from Great Britain 

 when he wrote his paper ; it is very probable that we have more species 

 than those below enumerated, but several of them are extremely hard 

 to distinguish, and even with named specimens from Herr Kuwert 

 before me, I find it very hard to separate closely allied species, and 

 nra by no means sure that they will all prove eventually to be distinct. 



The table given in Vol. iii, p. 384, of my work will serve roughly 

 to distinguish the majority of the species which were known as 

 British when I wrote it, but the character of the presence or absence 

 of margins on the posterior angles of the thorax is often a very 

 obscure one, and apt to prove exceedingly misleading (occasionally, as 

 in the continental species, H. obliteraius, Kies., they are present in 

 one sex only) ; on this character, however, Kuwert forms two of his 

 principal subgenera, Heterocerus, i. sp., in which the hind angles of 

 the thorax are not margined, and Tcenlietocerus, Kuw., in which they 

 arc margined, or at least show a trace of margins. The other sub- 

 genera, Micilus, Schiodte (containing a single species, M. muriniis, 

 Kies.), and Phyrites, Schiodte (containing a single species, P. aureohis, 

 Schiodte), are not represented in Britain ; the former is distinguished 

 by the shape of the scutellum (which is punctiform and subtransverse), 

 and the latter by having the third joint of the antennae small, and the 

 fourth forming with the following a uniform club ; whereas, in Hete- 

 rocerus and Tcenhetocerus, the third and fourth joints are both small. 

 Kuwert also makes too much use of colour distinctions ; this, perhaps, 

 is to a certain extent inevitable, but the colour in this genus is ex- 

 tremely variable, and often misleading as a character ; in fact, he 

 practically admits this, for, after defining one division as follows : — 



