Platycis. | SERRICORNIA. 129 
September; Mickleham and Caterham (Champion); Tunbridge Wells; Ashford; 
Sandwich ; Norfolk; Arundel; Shepherd’s Well (Waterhouse) ; Woodland, Devon 
(Leach) ; Leigh Woods, Bristol (in some numbers, Rye and others) ; Scarborough 
(Lawson). 
LAMPYRIDZ. 
This is a large and important family, the members of which are 
characterized by having the trochanters applied obliquely to the femora, 
and the tarsal claws often bifid; the antenne are either serrate or 
broadly flabellate or biflahellate, or simple; the abdominal segments in 
the male are often ineised in various fashions; the anterior and inter- 
mediate cox are contiguous, and the abdomen is composed of seven 
ventral segments ; the tarsi are 5-jointed, and have the fourth joint 
emarginate. Most of the species have the power of emitting light from 
the posterior abdominal segments, but this power is by no means 
universal ; in some genera, aS in our common glow-worm, the females 
have the wings very much shortened, rudimentary, or absent, and much 
resemble the larve in general appearance ; the large majority, however, 
of the species which belong to the family have as ample wings in the 
female as in the male ; in the case of those species in which the females 
are larviform, the males have the eyes very strongly developed, whereas 
in the females they are small; in those species, however, in which both 
the male and female are winged, the eyes present but slight differences in 
size; this fact of itself is sufficient to prove that the light-giving 
power of the female is bestowed upon it to attract the male. 
The Lampyride are, as a rule, inhabitants of the tropics; they are 
very poorly represented in Europe by six genera and about forty species, 
of which the best known are the glow-worms (Lampyris), and the 
Mediterranean ‘‘fire-flies” (Luciola) ; only two genera and two species 
are found in Britain. 
I. Male with elytra and wings fully developed ; antenna very 
short, not reaching base of thorax; prothoracie stigma 
large and open. . . . Lampyeis, ZL. 
Il. Male apterous, with elytra much abbreviated ; antenne 
comparatively long; prothoracic stigma hidden . , . . PHospHeNus, Lap. 
LAMPYRIS, Linné. 
This genus contains more than fifty species, which are widely distri- 
buted, representatives occurring in Ceylon, Java, Chili, South Africa, 
&c., and reaching as far north as Siberia; the genus Lampyris proper, 
however, does not appear to be found in North America; the males are 
furnished with ample elytra and wings, and very large eyes; the females 
are larviform, and entirely destitute of both elytra and wings, and have 
the luminous power strongly developed; in both sexes the head is 
covered by a prolongation of the prothorax, which, however, especially 
in the male, is transparent in front of the eyes; no less than twenty-one 
VOL. IV. K 
