494 Coleopterological Notices. 



APPENDIX. 



Notes. 



I. 



Since the assignment of Lycoptis (ante p. 311) to the Colydiidae, 

 I have been far from satisfied with this disposition of it, and have 

 therefore made some additional comparative studies, the result of 

 which indicates the decidedly greater propriety of associating it 

 with the Trogositidae. Here, however, if we regard tarsal struc- 

 ture as of primary importance, it must constitute a distinct tribe, 

 but if tarsal structure be found to be of subordinate value as it is 

 in the Passandrinae for example, the genus should be placed near 

 Grynocharis in the subfamily Peltinae, where its very remarkable 

 antenna? will at once isolate it. In any event it is a transitional 

 type between the Trogositidae and the Cucujidae. 



The tarsi are slender and undilated and appear to be perfectly 

 tetramerous — as previously described, — with the first joint smaller 

 than the second or third. 



The anterior coxa? are very small, transverse and pointed out- 

 wardly, but are far more feebly developed than in Grynocharis, 

 being much narrower than the distance separating the apex from 

 the lateral margin of the pronotum ; in Grynocharis guadrilineata 

 the latter distance is scarcely more than two-thirds as great as the 

 coxal width. 



II. 



The comparative scarcity of fossilized remains of the Coleoptera, 

 makes the problem of determining the mutual affinities of the forms 

 at present existing on the earth, a rather more difficult one than in 

 the case of vertebrates, where the ancestry can often thus be quite 

 conclusively traced, and among the Coleoptera there is no portion 

 of the complex clavicorn series, so difficult to classify in a natural 

 manner, as those groups clustering about the genera Colydium, 

 Rhysodes, Lyctus, Monotonia, Silvanus, Passandra, Cucujus, Tele- 

 phanus and Hemipeplus. These are, judging from their very 



