June i 9 oo.] Casey: On North American Coleoptera. 75 



are many minor errors throughout this important monograph, which 

 would doubtless have been avoided had the author lived to conduct it 

 through the press. Sphcerius politus, for example, on page 214, is at- 

 tributed to the author as a new species, whereas it was in reality de- 

 scribed by Dr. Horn many years ago. 



CRYPTOPHAGIM). 



Under this name have been grouped two closely allied types of so- 

 called Clavicornia, comprising numerous genera and species. The 

 body is small to minute in size, oblong or oval, more or less convex 

 and generally clothed with coarse subdecumbent pubescence, with 

 additional longer and more erect hairs arranged serially on the 

 elytra in many genera, similar to those of the Tritomidae. The 

 tarsi are pentamerous, becoming heteromerous in the males of certain 

 genera as in certain Cucujidae, and the anterior coxae are oval, mod- 

 erate in size, smaller and more deep-set than in Tritomidae, becoming 

 decidedly transverse in the Ephistemini, and having an external 

 trochantin. It is this form of the coxae which principally distinguishes 

 the family from the Cucujidae, where the anterior coxae are still smaller, 

 equally or still more deeply inserted and subglobular. The family is 

 also unmistakably allied in many characters, especially evident in the 

 Atomariinae, to the Scydmaenidae. Among these resemblances may be 

 mentioned the basal impressions of the pronotum, so characteristic of 

 the Cryptophaginae, the side margins of the latter in Ccenoscelis, and 

 the recurved ventral sutures of that and some other genera, the elon- 

 gate form of the trochanters, alternating long and short joints of the 

 antennal shaft and slender pentamerous tarsi. The only serricorn 

 character which is especially evident is the asymmetric antennal club 

 of Ephistcmus. 



Probably the most essentially peculiar structural feature of the Cryp- 

 tophagidae, although a distinguishing character of the Silvaninae as 

 well, is the modification of the lateral edges of the prothorax by serra- 

 tures or nodular thickenings, and the various forms assumed afford ex- 

 cellent subsidiary criteria for the definition of genera. Another pecu- 

 liarity is the narrow and feeble dehiscence of the elytra at or very 

 near the apex, there being but few genera, such as Diploavlus and 

 Loberus, in which this character virtually disappears. The eyes are 

 rounded and convex, usually rather well developed and coarsely 

 faceted, but somewhat variably so. The antennae are always 11- 



