aber Ey ex: 
NOTES ON THE GENUS HETEROCERWUWS, I. 
(Vide Vol. IIT. p. 384.) 
Stnce the publication of Volume III. two important papers have been 
published on this much-neglected and very obscure genus: “The Species 
of Heterocerus of Boreal America,” by Dr. Horn (Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 
xvii. Jan. 1890), and the ‘“Bestimmungstabelle der Heteroceren 
Europas und der angrenzenden Gebiete,” by Herr A. Kuwert (Verhand- 
lungen der Kaiserlich-koniglichen zoologisch-botanischen Gesellschaft in 
Wien, 1890, p. 517 et segqg). I have had some correspondence with Herr 
Kuwert, who has kindly looked over and determined for me a number 
of British specimens, and has sent me specimens of some of the species : 
in his last letter he expresses great regret that he had not had more 
British specimens before him when he wrote his paper. I have already 
published the results of these investigations in the Entomologist’s 
Monthly Magazine (Vol. ii. (Second Series), 1891, pp. 132 and 202); I 
have not had time to work the species thoroughly, nor have I had 
sufficient material : before arriving at definite conclusions it will be 
necessary to work at large series from various localities, with the males 
and females distinguished as taken from the same burrows. I am by no 
means sure that Herr Kuwert is right in several instances, and he him- 
self, in certain cases, seems doubtful as to Kiesenwetter’s determinations : 
there is only one other small genus of British Coleoptera that presents 
anything like the same difficulties as Heterocerus, and that is Haltica : 
in both cases I believe that a thorough revision is required, from large 
series, of all the European species. 
The table given in Vol. III. p. 384, will serve roughly to distinguish 
the species which were known as British when I wrote it, but the 
character of the presence or absence of margins on the posterior angles 
of the thorax is often a very obscure one; occasionally, as in the con- 
tinental species H. obliteratus, Kies, they are present in one sex only ; 
on this character, however, Kuwert forms two of his principal subgenera, 
Heterocerus i. sp., in which the hind angles of the thorax are not 
margined, and Tvenhetocerus, Kuw., in which they are margined or at 
least show a trace of margins (Hinterecken des Halsschildes gerandet 
oder mindestens mit Spuren yon Randung). Dr. Horn says, with regard 
