188 GOLIATHIDEOUS CETONIIDA. 
with the Entomologist; and second, to obtain, by the very minute 
analysis to which the species have been subjected, a clew to their 
natural classification. Naturalists are aware that another tribe of 
Lamellicorn beetles (namely, the family of the Sacred Scarabzi) 
was, twenty-four years ago, investigated by Mr. MacLeay with 
great care, the result whereof led him to propose a quinarian and 
circular distribution of the species, which he afterwards extended 
to the whole of the animal kingdom ; and as no subsequent author 
has revised his arrangement of the Scarabzei, it has been repeatedly 
held up as an unanswerable proof of the truth of the quinarian 
system. Five years ago, Mr. MacLeay published his Quinarian 
Revision of the Cetoniidze, since which period I have neglected no 
opportunity of analysing the species of one of the tribes of that 
family. The result is now before the entomological world, and I 
feel convinced that no one, after a careful examination of my 
figures and dissections, can arrive at any other conclusion than that 
these insects can neither be arranged in a quinarian nor in a 
circular system. I do not mean hereby to assert that such a 
system is totally unnatural, but simply that Mr. MacLeay has 
entirely failed in his endeavour to carry out such a system amongst 
the Goliathideous Cetoniide. 
The plant figured in plate 45, is the South-African Ixia mon- 
adelpha. 
