118 ==Mr. Westwood on a new Species of Longicorn Beetle. 
were great failures, chiefly owing to the fact that their authors paid 
too little attention to minute structural characters; whilst the great 
work of Stephens could hardly be expected to be more fortunate when 
we bear in mind the peculiar nature of the gigantic task which the 
author had imposed upon himself. On the other hand, the ‘ Mono- 
graphia Apum Angliz’ will be a text-book so long as entomological 
literature exists,—first, because the author had concentrated his 
energies on a group of moderate extent ; and secondly, because his 
peculiar modus operandi had led him to seize and dwell upon minute 
structural characters as the foundation of his system. How far the 
literature of our own day well deserves the censure or the praise 
which we have learned to allot to these different works will perhaps 
require another half century to determine, although the voice of the 
critic even now demands its absolute extermination. To avoid such a 
result, it behoves every one who will attempt the description of species 
to do so with a view to benefit science, the advancement of which 
must inevitably be retarded by the continued heaping up of crude 
technicalities which can only be likened to so much rubbish thrown 
upon a highway, of no use till the hammer of the critical road- 
maker has broken it to pieces and rendered it available for scientific 
use, or an encumbrance to be thrown aside for its worthlessness. 
These observations may seem ill-placed as the preface to the de- 
scription of a single new species of Longicorn Beetle ; but, as stated 
above, the description of an isolated species may be so treated as 
materially to serve the cause of science by the investigation of the 
affinities of the greup to which it belongs; and it is in this point of 
view that I venture to offer such a description to the subscribers 
this work. 
In every group of natural objects, especially if of large extent, 
there are some individuals which are more especially typical or cha- 
racteristic of the group; and in a natural classification such in- 
dividuals find their place at the greatest distance from the members 
of neighbouring allied groups. The type species of a family must 
always be looked for, therefore, if the classification be natural, in 
the centre of the group, whilst the species which, from their greater 
similarity to the neighbouring tribes, are most aberrant from the 
family type, are to be found on its outskirts. 
In the classification of the Longicorn Coleoptera in the various 
works of Latreille we find the genus Spondylis placed at the head of 
the Prionidex, evidently from its relationship to the genera Parandra 
and Passandra. Serville (Ann. Soc. Ent. France, i. p. 121) indeed 
adopts the same position, forming, however, Spondylis (with Can- 
