of antennae, between the males of Idolomorpha, §*c. 261 



capensis* (correctly identifying Avitli it Serville's J^. pur- 

 pureipennis, to which /. Wahlbergi may eventually also 

 have to be added as a synonym), and a male insect Avith 

 lobeless legs as Idolomorpha defoliata, Serville ; but fail- 

 ing, in both cases, to notice anything remarkable about 

 the antennae of the male. 



M. C. Stal, in his recently -published " Sy sterna 

 Mantodeorum," gives as a leading character of the sub- 

 family, " antenna? marium bipectinatje," and, from the fact 

 that in the dichotomous table of genera he distinguishes 

 between the " dentes pectinis elongati, angusti, compressi," 

 of Gongylus (?), Empusa, and Idolomorpha, and the 

 " dentes breviores, lati, subrotundati, basi coarctati " of 

 Blepharis, may be presumed to have examined the an- 

 tennae with some care ; but from his failure to remark so 

 striking and important a character as the unipectinate 

 condition of the male antenna in Idolomorpha, a genus 

 which, be it remembered, he was the first to establish on 

 a firm basis, by detecting and pointing out the characters 

 which really distinguish it from the closely similar Em- 

 puscB, we can only conclude, either that this acute ento- 

 mologist satisfied himself with a careful examination of 

 the male antenna? of Blepharis and of some species of 

 Empusa (of Gongylus, $ , he had none), or that he took 

 his description of the differences between the two kinds 

 of teeth on trust from Serville, who uses much the same 

 words in describing them. 



There can be no doubt, then, that the antennae of the 

 males in all the EmpusidcB have been hitherto universally 

 regarded by the best and most careful entomologists as 

 bipectinate organs, bipectinated in the sense that each 

 joint bears two distinct processes, and they have this 

 structure in all the species belonging to the genera Ble- 

 pharis, Idolum, Gongylus, and Empusa; but in Idolo- 

 morpha, though ap])arently doubly-combed, they are in 

 reality unipectinate, having, that is to say, only one process 

 to each joint. All those entomologists, therefore, who have 

 taken the antenna? of male Idolomorpha; to be bipectinated 

 must have been the victims of a sort of optical delusion, of 



* M. de Saussure says of this species, "I'extremite des ailes et souvcnt des 

 elytres passe au rose." At the Aj)ril Meeting of the Society I exhibited 

 some coloured drawings made by J. P. Mansel Weale, B.A., from the 

 living insect, in which these parts are represented as bright rose-i'ed, 

 especially on the midcr surface. 



u 2 



