AMERICAN COLKOPTERA. 179 



critical judgment of later systematists could accept. In his later 

 Systema Eleutheratorum (1801) Fabricius includes under this cap- 

 tion fifteen species, now distributed among some eight or ten genera 

 or subgenera in European lists. Notwithstanding a looseness of 

 definition, which permits the association of species of Ernobius, 

 Xestobium, Priobium, Endecatomus, Cis, etc., under a single name, 

 the genus was described with greater precision than most earlier and 

 many of later date, and in a gradually restricted sense has been in 

 constant use in Europe and America for over ;i hundred years. In 

 the latest European list the authors have replaced Anobium Fab. 

 by Byrrhus Geof. It is not my purpose to discuss here at length 

 the propriety of this course, but I cannot refrain from saying' that 

 aside from the questionable availability of the Geoffroyan genera 

 because of lack of conformity to the generally recognized rules of 

 binomial nomenclature, the substitution of a name never current in 

 this connection, but long used in another, for one which has been 

 in constant use for a century appears to me to be totally unwarran- 

 ted and calculated only to subvert the interests of science by creat- 

 ing a needless confusion in existing literature. The law of priority 

 is not a fetich to be blindly followed but should always be subordi- 

 nated to what the late Dr. Hamilton bluntly calls the law of com- 

 mon sense. 



The first author to divide the old genus Anobium on structural 

 characters was C G. Thomson in his work on the Skandinavian 

 Coleoptera, 1859-63, in which he restricts the name to those specie- 

 having the prothorax excavated beneath for the reception of the 

 head, and the pectoral excavation for the reception of the antennae 

 prolonged into the metasternum.* The genera Ernobius, Hadro- 

 bregmus, Sitodrepa and Cnecus were based upon other members of 

 the old Anobium, and all of these, with the exception of ('men*, 

 which is a synonym of Xestobium Motschulsky, still stand. Both 



* In his paper on the Anobiidse LeConte writes as follows in this connection : 

 "The modern idea of types for genera cannot he rigorously applied to those 

 founded by the older authors, and the attempt to do so has been productive of 

 much confusion. The author who first distinguishes the composite elements of a 

 genus to which no type is definitely assigned by the founder, may certainly use 

 his judgment in applying the original name to any one of the new genera which 

 contains species of the original author. This judgment once exercised constitutes 

 a kind of priority which must be respected, in order to prevent the inconven- 

 ience of applying the old name to several different genera according to the ideas 



TEANS. AM. ENT. SOC. XXXI. JUNE. 1905. 



