454 ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA, [| Strepsiptera or Stylopide. 
campodeiform and active, certainly seem to show that they are some- 
what closely allied to Meloé; the characters of the groups will be found 
fully discussed in Westwood’s Classification, Vol. II. pp. 287, &e., with 
figures of the species and larvee and various parts of their bodies; the 
student of the group is also referred to Kirby’s Monographia Apum 
Anglie, vol. ii. p. 111, Curtis’s Strepsiptera (Brit. Ent. Plates, 226, 
385 and 433), and Leconte and Horn’s Classification of the Coleoptera 
of North America, pp. 425, 426; the following are the chief charac- 
teristics of the males, but there is considerable doubt as to the true rela- 
tions of various parts, more especially as regards the mouth organs and 
the thoracic segments ; the body is long and narrow, its great extent 
being occupied by a very large metathorax ; the general character of the 
body, as remarked by Westwood, indicates great weakness, and we 
accordingly find that the insects live but a very short time in the imago 
state ; the head and thorax are of a velvety texture ; the mouth organs 
are very abnormal, a character probably due to the fact that the insects in 
the perfect state, in all probability, take no food, or very little, during 
the very short time they live, and simply continue the species; it is 
doubtful, in fact, if there is any true oral aperture ; apparently man- 
dibles and one pair of palpi are present, and Savigny, Kirby, Leconte and 
Horn and others state this as a fact; Curtis, however, regards these so- 
called ‘ mandibles” as maxille, and says ‘ Labrum and mandibles want- 
ing ?”? Westwood regards the mouth organs as analogous to those of 
certain Lepidoptera, and after remarking that Newman considers the 
order as not sufficiently separated from the Diptera, proceeds as follows : 
‘“T cannot, however, find the least analogy between the oral organiza. 
tion of the Strepsiptera and the tubularly developed elbowed mouth of 
the Diptera, the labrum of which is greatly elongated ; whereas, on the 
contrary, there seems to me much greater resemblance, in this respect, 
between the Strepsiptera and Lepidoptera, the labrum in both being 
soldered flatly to the head, the acute mandibles, as they have been 
termed in Stylops, being exactly represented in some of the Linnean 
Bombyees, by the short rudimental maxill, and the large articulated 
appendages being much more analogous to the labial palpi of the 
Lepidoptera, than to the maxillary palpi of the Diptera ;” the head is 
large and transverse, prolonged at the sides into a stout peduncle at the 
end of which are situated the eyes, which are large and prominent and 
strongly granulate, the lenses being large and comparatively few in num- 
ber; the antenne are inserted on the front, at the base of the lateral 
processes of the head, and vary in the different genera ; the prothorax is 
very short, consisting of a simple ring or collar, to which the forelegs 
are attached on the underside ; the mesothorax is scarcely larger and 
bears on each side a slender coriaceous club-shaped appendage, with the 
inner margin membranous; these appendages have given rise to much 
controversy, but apparently are aborted representatives of the elytra ; 
the metathorax is very large, greater in bulk than the rest of the body 
