15 



the obsoleteness of one of its maxillary lobes (wliether the inner, or 

 outer, is, I think, open for consideration), its enormously developed, 

 curiously shaped, hexagonal mentum, and its short, incrassated labial 

 palpi (in which the three joints, although present, are certainly not easy 

 to be traced-), as embodying, in conjunction with its trimerous feet, some 

 of the main points by which the genus (and, to a certain extent, indeed, 

 the whole of the small family of Latridiidce) may be known. Now in 

 the L. nodifer all these particulars (and many more, of a less primary 

 signification) are hardly distinguishable from the corresponding ones in 

 the L. minutus, and I therefore conclude that it is a typical representa- 

 tive of its group. 



A few general remarks, however, on the affinities and structural 

 features of the Latridii, which my recent observations have tended to 

 corroborate, may perhaps be here ventured upon. Coleopterists seem 

 to differ as to whether the maxillae of the species are composed of two 

 lobes, or only of one ; but we may well make allowance for some 

 apparent contradictions in the description of organs thus minute. 

 Mannerheim states the inner lobe to be distinct, but small and narrow; 

 an opinion which is adopted by M. Jacq. Duval. Westwood, by admit- 

 ting the Latridii into his Mycetophagidts, and defining the maxillae of the 

 latter to be always bilobed, implies a somewhat similar conclusion. 

 Eedtenbacher, on the contrary, affirms the maxillae to have but a single 

 lobe, a fact, however, which is queried by Lacordaire. For my own 

 part, I think that neither of these views is absolutely wrong, though 

 the rigid enunciation of either of them may amount to an inaccuracy ; 

 for if one of the lobes be obsolete, it follows of necessity that it is not 

 actually absent. It appears to me that the outer one is so shortened, 

 and soldered to the other, as to be hardly distinguishable from it ; so 

 that the entire process might be regarded, with almost equal truth (in 

 a generic diagnosis), as either single, or bi-lobed. And after an accu- 

 rate examination both of the L. minutus and nodifer, I am inclined to 

 suspect that it is the outer lobe which is principally reduced ; for I 

 think I can just recognize a most minute spinule which marks the apex 

 of the inner one, behind which the whole organ is pilose and truncated, 

 as though to indicate a much abbreviated (though confluent) outer lobe. 



The labial palpi I imagine to be, as in nearly the whole of the 

 Coleoptera, undoubtedly triarticulate; and it seems to me that it is the 

 basal joint, rather than the apical one, which it is least easy to detect. 

 That it exists, however, there cannot be a question, for I am aware of 

 no instance in which an enormously inflated articulation of the labial 

 palpi is implanted directly into the Hgula ; it is always preceded by a 



