612 Transactions South African Philosophical Society, [vol. xii. 



long, very little attenuate towards the apical part, plane or nearly so 

 in the dorsal part, and very little sloping on the sides, punctato-striate 

 in the dorsal pai't and oftener than not punctate only on the sides, 

 intervals plane or moderately costate ; the greatest part of the pro- 

 pygidium is hidden by the elytra, the pygidium is very sloping ; the 

 legs are short, robust, the posterior coxae are sharply carinate semi- 

 circularly on the outer part and project distinctly beyond the elytra ; 

 anterior tibiae bi-dentate, liut with the basal tooth very blunt or 

 merely angular ; they are carinate on the upper side and have an 

 inner apical spur ; the joints of the tarsi are compressed, strongly 

 bristly underneath, the fifth joint is as long as the four preceding 

 joints taken together ; the claws are hinged, double and parallel, the 

 outer one is nearly as long as the inner but a little more slender, and 

 the latter is incised in both the anterior and intermediate tarsi in both 

 sexes, although in the male the incision is very slight or often 

 invisible ; the pygidium has two patches of white hairs or is some- 

 times completely hairy, and so are the sides of the abdomen ; the 

 prosternum is produced into a compressed aculeate process con- 

 spicuous or not ; antennae nine- jointed. 



The two sexes are very much alike, but the male is easily identified 

 by the broader inner claw of the anterior tarsi. 



This genus has only one i^epresentative in South Africa, but is 

 numerously represented in the rest of Africa. 



Herr A. J. Kolbe has divided the genus into several sub-genera 

 <Stett. Ent. Zeit., 1894, p. 207). One of them, Peripopillia, has, I 

 think, a generic value, and is retained as such ; but the only dis- 

 tinction between Popillia and the genus Nannopopillia created for 

 Popillia minusctda, Har., are the shape of the clypeus, the absence of 

 a, very projecting mesosternal process, and the fissured inner claw of 

 the intermediate tarsi in the male ; the basal part of the pygidium is 

 hairy transversely. Mr. Arrow has included in this genus another 

 South African species which certainly belongs to Popillia, and in 

 which the mesosternum does project, although not quite as much as 

 in the species of the Sub-genus Popillia, which has the inner claw of 

 the intermediate tarsi also incised in the male. This last character 

 is found in Popillia biguttata, although it is not conspicuously 

 shown, and I have also met with it in some species from the Gold 

 Coast, P. femoralis among others ; the buccal organs are similar to 

 those of Popillia, and so, for that matter, are those of Nannopopillia, 

 so that the latter's distinctive characters are after all reduced to the 

 slope of the clypeus and the sharper outer teeth of the anterior tibia?. 

 The species of Popillia are found in and on flowers, and also on 

 the trees in daytime. 



