CLASSIFICATION OF COLEOPTERA. 167 



believes that the larvae live in wood, and are of the cruciform 

 type ; but this remains to be proved. He considers the Cupedida^ 

 to be Adephaga of the most primitive type. 



The Sexual Organs — Ovaries and Testes. — The ovaries of insects 

 consist each of a greater or lesser number of tubes, which taper 

 off to a thread at one end, and at the other open into the 

 oviduct. Each ovarian tube contains eggs or cells that develop 

 into eggs, and it generally contains also other cells which do 

 not develop into eggs, but whose function it is to supply nutri- 

 ment to the growing egg- cells. According to the presence or 

 not of these nutritive cells, and their position when present, the 

 ovarian tubes offer three different types of structure, placed by 

 Korschelt and Heider in the following order : — (1) Without 

 nutritive chamber. (2) The nutritive cells in chambers which 

 alternate with the egg-chambers {meroistic ovary). (3) The 

 nutritive cells massed together in the single terminal chamber 

 {holoistic ovary). 



The first type is not met with in the Coleoptera. The second 

 occurs in the Coleoptera, but only in those families now com- 

 prised in the Adephaga. In all other Coleoptera, so far as is 

 known, the ovaries are of the third type. Emery, who first 

 used this difference in the structure of the ovaries as a basis 

 for dividing the Coleoptera into two suborders, the Adephaga 

 and Polyphaga, considered that the Polyphagan type of ovary 

 was the more primitive of the two. From the order in which 

 the types are placed by Korschelt and Heider, these distin- 

 guished embryologists seem to suggest the opposite view — which 

 is also the one accepted by Ganglbauer, Kolbe, and Lameere. 



The structure of the testes was investigated by Leon Dufour 

 in a great many different kinds of beetles more than sevepty 

 years ago ; but his work seems to have received less attention 

 from systematists than the results deserved, although these had 

 been well summarized by Lacordaire in his ' Introduction a 

 I'Entomologie.' These organs (the testes) can, says Lacordaire, 

 be divided at once into (1) those which are simple, and (2) those 

 which are compound. The simple testes consist each of an 

 elongated slender vessel, usually coiled up to resemble a ball ; 

 they are found only in the two families " des Carabiques et des 

 Hydrocanthaires," that is to say, in the Adephaga (Fig. 5). 



The compound testes are formed of two or several glands — 

 the " capsules spermatiques," or testicular follicles. They are 

 divisible (in beetles) into three sections, according to the form 

 of the follicles and the manner in which these join the vas 

 deferens. The first and second sections differ little from one 

 another, and present intermediate stages ; the follicles are more 

 or less elongate, tubular, or in the form of rounded, oval or pyri- 

 form sacs, but always sessile, i. e. without a special duct leading 

 from each follicle. In the first section they are placed at the end 



