122 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



have given to others to work in the same field. Notwithstanding 

 some serious mistakes which have since been very readily 

 admitted by the author himself, Lameere's classification was a 

 great step in the right direction. Previous to its publication, 

 Ganglbauer had recognized that three different types of wing- 

 venation are to be met with in the Coleoptera : one characteristic 

 of the family-series Caraboidea ; another of a series of families 

 that used to be included in the heterogeneous assemblage known 

 as the Clavicornia, but which he for the first time had withdrawn 

 to form into a distinct group or family-series, the Staphylinoidea; 

 and a third type, occurring under various modifications in the 

 different families that did not come into either of those two 

 family-series. 



Accepting this threefold type of wing-venation as a basis for 

 classification, Lameere divided the Coleoptera into three sub- 

 orders : the Cantharidiformes, the Staphyliniformes, and the 

 Carabiformes, the two latter corresponding almost wholly with 

 the family-series Staphylinoidea and Caraboidea of Ganglbauer, 

 but with a fresh arrangement of the families in each group. 

 The Cantharidiformes he subdivided into ten groups, which from 

 considerations of structure and phylogeny he placed in the 

 following order : Teredilia, Malacodermata, Sternoxia, Macro- 

 dactyla, Brachymera, Palpicornia, Clavicornia, Phytophaga 

 (with which he includes the Longicornia and Ehynchophora, the 

 Brenthidfe excepted, which he places among the Clavicornia), 

 Heteromera, and Lamellicornia. He pointed out the absurdity 

 of Leconte and Horn's view that the Ehynchophora were 

 distinct from all other Coleoptera, and the lowest and most 

 ancestral of all ; that, on the contrary, this group was very 

 highly specialized, and so little distinct from the Phytophaga 

 that they may reasonably be supposed to be derived directly 

 from them and ought to be included in the same group. 



At this time he believed that the Teredilia (in which group 

 were included the families Lymexylonidse, Anobiidte, Bostrichidte, 

 Cupedidse, and DerodontidaB) contained the forms most nearly 

 approaching to the ancestral type of beetle ; and he therefore 

 placed the Cantharidiformes as the first of his three suborders. 

 It was a mistake, as he has since recognized, not to place the 

 Carabiformes first ; and for this his first proposed classification, 

 of which we have given here the bare outlines, he has in a later 

 paper * substituted another. 



In the meantime there had been two other very notable con- 

 tributions to the morphology and classification of the Coleoptera, 

 one from Professor Kolbe,t of Berlin, and the other from Herr 



* "Nouvelles Notes pour la Classification des Coleopteres," in Ann. Soc. 

 Ent. Beh^. xlvii. p. 155 (1903). 



f " Vergleichend-merphologische Untersuchungen an Koleoptereu nebst 

 Grundlachen zu einen System und zur Systematik derselben," in Archiv. fitr 

 Naturg. 1901, Beiheft. p. 39. 



