180 CANARIAN COLEOPTERA. 



setiformibus rectis inter Histcridas anomalum. Prostemi forma 

 antice acute carinati cum gen. Pachi/lopo congruit ; sed mandi- 

 bulis ad apicem longe et subito inflexis acutis necnon intus dente 

 armatis, pronoto ubique ajqualiter punctulato, propygidio longi- 

 usciilo, antennarum scapo pilis longissimis densius instructo, pal- 

 porvimque articulo ultimo cylindrico, in labialibus magno, a Pa- 

 chylopo et Baprino insiiper dignoscitur. 



A ^evos, alienus, et owl, unguiculus. 



The singular insect for which I have estabKshed the present genus 

 resides about the drifting sand-hills of Fuerteventura, where it bur- 

 rows at the roots of the various sand-plants which stud those arid 

 maritime wastes, in company with the two anomalous CnrcuUonklie 

 (one of them blind, and the other nearly so) which I described at 

 considerable length in a recent Paper* on the " Atlantic Cossonides "; 

 and, although exponents of families so remote from each other, one 

 nevertheless cannot help remarking a certain cm'ious analogy in 

 several of the structural peculiarities of all these sand-infesting 

 Coleoptera. Whether we regard indeed the enormous length of the 

 hairs and cUia with which they are beset on portions of their surface 

 and organs which are not usually thus clothed, or their unnaturally 

 abbreviated antennae and more or less diminished eyes, or their ex- 

 traordinarily spinulose legs, and the fact of their feet being in every 

 instance most wonderfully modified (either by additions to or detrac- 

 tions from what is normal in their respective central types), it is 

 impossible not to be struck by the quaint and mysterious analogy 

 which would seem to bind them together (however distant in affinity) 

 into at any rate a loccdly associated assemblage. 



Viewing the characters, however, of Xenonychus as compared 

 with those of its actual aDies, it is at once remarkable amongst the 

 Histerido} by the singular convexity of its body beneath (occasioned 

 by the inflation of its meso- and meta-sterna and abdominal seg- 

 ments), and the thickened, conical, elevated form of its (most widely 

 separated) posterior coxai ; by the enormously long hairs with which 

 either side of its under surface, and the inner face of its four hinder 

 tibioe, are studded ; and by the wonderful construction of its tarsal 

 claws, which are immensely long, slender and setiform, and (with 

 the exception of the anterior pair which are slightly incurved at the 

 apex) almost perfectly straight. 



In minor details the genus is distinguished by its shortened an- 

 tenna? (which have the scape beset Avith excessively long hairs) and 



* Vide Trans. Ent. Soc. Loncl. (new series) v. pp. 388, 394. 



