‘Anatomy of the Male Genital Tube in Coleoptera. 479 
mens for us. Mr. Hugh Scott of Cambridge University 
assisted us in every way that we asked. 
Mr. G. C. Champion and Mr. C. J. Gahan have been 
very good by helping us in the disagreeable task of 
naming our heterogeneous material. 
As regards the taxonomical and phylogenetic portions 
of the memoir it is desirable that we should say that they 
are drawn up to display the part that a knowledge of the 
fertilising structures should have in these two departments 
of Coleopterology. The senior author has for many years 
taken an interest in the taxonomy and phylogeny of 
Coleoptera, and it would therefore be absurd to pretend 
that, apart from consideration as to the sexual organs, he 
is in complete ignorance as to the bearings of other 
branches of anatomy, of physiology, of ethology aud of 
ontogeny on the two departments mentioned. But the 
junior author is comparatively a recent student of these 
departments; and the senior author, therefore, gave him 
a free hand in drawing up the tables, and has modified 
them but little. They represent, therefore, fairly well the 
results that may be obtained in taxonomy and phylogeny 
from a preliminary study of the male genital tube. We 
hope that we have made it clear, in other parts of the 
paper, that our work is only a very imperfect introduction 
to this comparatively narrow field of inquiry. But we 
believe the subject will prove to be of great importance 
when combined with the results derived through other 
lines of investigation. There is one point, however, in 
the memoir that has not been based on study of the 
aedeagus, viz. the families we have made use of. Though 
we shall have in the course of this memoir to propose 
several changes as to the families of Coleoptera, it must 
not be supposed that the families here dealt with have 
been decided on from the point of view of the structure 
of the genital tube. The forms studied were selected in 
the first instance simply by our desire to study these 
structures throughout the whole Order. We may, how- 
ever, say that though certain changes will have to be 
made, yet our impression is that most of the families at 
present in use in Coleopterology will have their validity 
substantiated by a continuance of this study. 
The second part of our morphological section deals with 
the nature of the male organs; and under the heading 
Phytophagoidea in the section phylogeny some more 
KK 2 
