Iflll.] 



241 



can be protruded from the posterior extremity of the body. In Janiiary of this 

 year he observed a male Ammiris niavius, L., settle on the upper surface of a 

 leaf with its wings expanded. The insect flexed its abdomen, making the dorsal 

 surface convex, so that the extremity of the body was brought level with the 

 brands, and the tufts were then thrust out. By alternately flexing and 

 straightening out the abdomen, the tufts were passed to and fro over the surface 

 of the brands as though some secretion was being conveyed from the one to the 

 other. Prof. Poulton has suggested that the greasy appearance of the brands 

 may be probably interpreted on the hypothesis that they serve to retain and 

 distribute a scent employed in courtship brought to them by the tufts. 

 Dr. Longstaff said that he was satisfied that in Euplcea and Limnas chrysippus 

 the characteristic scent was not caused by tlie tufts and brands, though these 

 were very likely the cause of another volatile scent which certainly existed in 

 these cases. Female Danaids have a scent as well as males ; the scent common 

 to both being nauseous, while that peculiar to the male is probably a help in 

 coiirtship. Comm. J. J. Walker read the following paper — " Some remarkable 

 ant-friend Lepidoptera of Queensland," by F. P. Dodd, F.E.S., with Supplement 

 by E. Meyrick, B.A., F.R.S. 



NOTES ON THE BRITISH SPECIES OF LONGITARSUS, Latr. 



(A GENUS OP COLEOPTERA). 



BY J. R. LE B. TOMLIN, M.A., F.E.S., AND W. E. SHARP, F.E.S. 



In the year 1829 the Abbe Pierre Andre Latreille estabhshed the 

 genus Longitarsus, and to-day that genus remains to Coleopterists 

 perhaps the most confused in synonymy and bewildering in 

 specific differentiation of all the genera of the Coleoptera. That a 

 group, of which the species are so widely distributed and, in most cases, 

 so abundant and so easy of examination, should thus have become little 

 better than a stone of stumbling to the majority of students, may be 

 easily explained by the extraordinary instability of specific form which 

 so many of its members exhibit. In size, in shape, in colour, and to 

 some extent in punctuation, especially of the thorax, in fact, in most of 

 those morphological characters on which systematists are accustomed 

 to base their conception of specific unity, many of these insects vary to 

 an extent quite unrivalled by any other genus of the British Halticidse. 

 Why, in this particular gi'oup, the bonds of specific stability should 

 seem so relaxed, appears a question beyond our present knowledge. 

 We should recjuire to understand far more intimately than we now do 

 the economy of these insects, their relations with their environment, in 

 a word, those factors which I'egiilate and maintain adherence to specific 

 form among the phytophagovis Colfoptera, before we coxdd hazard even 



