( 169 ) 



VIII. On new and little-known Lagriidae frfmi Tropical 

 America. By George Charles Champion, F.Z.S. 



[Read March 7th, 1917.] 



Plates XII, XIII. 



The present paper gives an account of the unnamed species 

 of Statira from S. America, the Antilles, etc., in the British 

 Museum, supplemented by those in the Hope Museum 

 at Oxford, and a few Brazilian and Trinidad forms kindly 

 supplied by Mr. G. E. Bryant. The study of these S. 

 American insects had to be undertaken mider exceptionally 

 difficult circumstances, as not a single definitely-named 

 representative of any of the numerous species described 

 by Maklin was to be found in the collections in this country. 

 It is therefore not improbable that some of them have 

 been incorrectly identified by me from the descriptions 

 alone, in which the sexual distinctions are not given, or, 

 if seen, not recognised as such. The material examined 

 is mainly that obtained by J. Gray, H. Clark, and A. Fry 

 in the neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, and by H. W. 

 Bates on the Amazons, the specimens from other S. 

 American localities being few in number. Dr. R. F. 

 Sahlberg was in Brazil in 1850 and earlier, and a few of 

 his captures (most of which have been identified in the 

 Fry collection) were described by Maldin in 1875. H. W. 

 Bates appears to have j^aid a good deal of attention to the 

 genus Statira and its allies ^ while he was resident on the 

 Amazons, doubtless on account of the great resemblance 

 of many of them to genera of Carabidae, e.g. Agra, Casnonia, 

 Dro?nius, etc. 



Statira, Lep. et Serv. 



Eighty-three members of this genus were recorded 

 from Central America in the " Biologia " in 1889-1893, 

 one only of which was known to me at that time to occur 

 south of Panama. The collections from South America, 



^ These latter are described in the "Entomologist's Monthly 

 Magazme," Vol. LIII, jjp. 132-154, 188-195, 218-223, pi. 2, June- 

 October, 1917. 



TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND, 1917. — PART I. (NOV.) 



