30 Mr. F. P. Pascoe on some new or little-known 
Tibie trigonate. Tarsi quatuor- vel quinque-articulati, articulis tribus 
primis dilatatis, brevissimis. Corpus depressum. 
The curious little insect constituting this genus belongs to the 
subfamily Rhizophagine, hitherto composed of Rhizophagus only, 
but to which I would also refer Zurops, Woll., and Nomophlaeus* and 
Hesperobenus, Motsch.t The two latter, however, appear to me to 
be identical. There are several discrepancies among authors in their 
descriptions of Rhizophagus. In the first place, Erichson denies that 
there are two lobes to the maxilla, as Curtis had represented; but 
M. J. du Val says that in this he is most certainly in error. Again, 
M. Lacordaire allows only ten joints to the antenne, the ninth and 
tenth forming the club. M.J. du Val gives eleven; but in the two 
species which he has figured in his great work (‘ Coléopt. d’ Europe ’) 
twelve are represented, as is the case also in Mr. Curtis’s plate. As 
M. J. du Val states, there are unquestionably two lobes to the 
maxilla; and as unquestionably, I should say, are the antennze 
twelve-jointed, as MM. Curtis and Migneaux have represented,—the 
last forming a little knob on the eleventh; but the two, although 
minute, are perfectly distinct. Exception may be taken that these 
are not true articulations, especially the last; but in any case the 
ninth has nothing to do with the club. They are here described as 
12-jointed, as I cannot understand on what principle the last is to 
be ignored any more than the one preceding it. The line of punc- 
tures, which form a sort of oval on the prothorax, recalls the impres- 
* Whilst these sheets were passing through the press, I have had the oppor- 
tunity of examining for the first time Dr. Leconte’s ‘ Classification of the Coleo- 
ptera of North America.’ In this work Hesperobenus and Nomophieus are placed 
in the new family ‘“ Monotomide,” which is “at once” separated from all 
Nitidulide by the ‘‘ form of the anterior coxe ”’ (rounded in the former, transverse 
in the latter). Under the microscope it appeared to me that in some a transverse 
form was more or less assumed when the leg was thrown backwards; this was 
the case with the large, apparently rounded cox of Crine ; but in Hurops they 
are decidedly transverse. It is only necessary to examine the more recent ento- 
mological works (particularly the ‘Genera des Coléoptéres d’Europe,’ passim) to 
see the wide divergence of statements in reference to mere matters of fact, where 
they concern the minute structures. On this account I hesitate trusting im- 
plicitly to these delicate characters, so difficult in most cases to realize. 
+ I have been unable to procure Colonel Motschulsky’s ‘Etudes Ento- 
mologiques,’ in which, I presume, these genera were proposed. I believe the 
work was never regularly in the market, and can only be procured in an indirect 
manner. It is a question how far this is a publication. I have seen portions of 
the work in the library of the Linnean Society, but have not met with any indica- 
tions of the two genera in question. I haye, however, received type-specimens 
through M. Schaufuss, of Dresden. 
