INSECTA MADERENSIA. 431 



adclitioual interest in connection with that ancient continent of which these ocean 

 ruins, on which for so many ages it has been cut off, are the undoubted witnesses. 

 Approximating in affinity to Farmena and Dorcadion, yet presenting a modifica- 

 tion essentially its own, it becomes doubly important in a geographical point of 

 view ; and it was therefore with the greater pleasure that I lately received, from 

 T. S. Leacock, Esq., of Fimchal, a second representative from the distant rocks of 

 the Salvages (midway between Madeira and the Canaries), — on which we may 

 almost pronou^nce for certain that an entomologist had never before set foot. 

 Differing widely in specific minutiae, yet agreeing to an identity in everything 

 generic, they offer conjointly the strongest evidence to the quondam existence of 

 many subsidiary links (long since lost, and radiating in all probability from some 

 intermediate type) during the period when the Avhole of these islands were portions 

 (and perhaps very elevated ones) of a vast continuous land. 



In the details of their trophi the genera of this section of the Eucerata are so 

 nearly similar, that we must not look, even in otherwise anomalous forms, for any 

 very striking u'regularities there. And yet the mouth is not altogether uncharac- 

 terized in Deuccdlon, since its laterally-rounded upper lip, long and acuminated 

 palpi (the basal joint of which is broadly sinuated externally, as in Blabinotus), 

 together with its imusually produced and deeply bUobed ligula, at once remove it 

 from Dorcadion, — from which moreover its largely developed and exceedingly 

 ujaeven prothorax (a hinder zone of which is suddenly constricted, as though by a 

 wide and tightened belt, and is ribbed with transverse plaits), added to its curiously 

 pitted and tubercvilar elytra, will stUl further serve to separate it. In some 

 respects perhaps it is more akin to Parmena than to Dorcadion : nevertheless its 

 comparatively gigantic size, and the contracted, plicate, posterior band of its 

 (otherwise) greatly wrinkled prothorax, apart from the above-mentioned pecu- 

 liarity of its elytral sculpture (one of the most remarkable features which it 

 possesses), and its freedom from the dense elongated pile which is more or less 

 evident in all the members of the former, AviU equally distinguish it from that 

 group also. 



Amongst other singularities, a tendency (which I have likewise observed, occa- 

 sionally, in the Jfor^H^^) to have one of their elytra a little shorter than the other is 

 strongly indicated in the Deucaliones. Thus, of my two examples of the D. Deser- 

 tarum one is very decidedly so constituted ; and, out of eight of the D. oceanicum it 

 is traceable in no less than three. Like many of their allies in this department of 

 the Longicorns, they are gifted with the capability of making a grating or hissing 

 noise, — the modus operandi in producing which (since I have not been able to 



propensities withiQ the crevices of rocks, we are at once struck witli tlie conviction that, diu-ing the 

 enormous interval of time which has elapsed since the mighty convulsions which rent asunder these 

 regions terminated, it has probably never removed many yards from the weather-beaten ledges which it 

 now inhabits. 



