432 ]\Ir. T. Vernon Wollaston on the 
Acanthomerus, from St. Helena, in some of tlie Madeiran 
Caulotrupides, and in Oodemas, from the Sandwich 
Islands, — a genus which I have not been able to procure 
for inspection. "VYe see it also, though much less poAver- 
fully indicated, in the Sericotrogus subcenescens from New 
Zealand, and in certain of the Phloeopltagi, — as, for in- 
stance, the European P. aneo-piceus ; and it is about 
equally traceable in the Pseudop]doeoj)hagiis tenax, of the 
Madeiran and Azorean archipelagos. Except in these 
particular instances I have no evidence of its existence; for 
in the P achy stylus dimidiatus, from Chili, as well as in 
two Pentarthra from the same region, it is so excessively 
faint as to be hardly even recognizable. But "what I should 
regard as far more significant, in a systematic point of 
view, is the occasional obsoleteness, or even total absence, 
of the scutellum, — for in by far the greater number of the 
Cossonids that organ is (in proportion to their size) largely 
expressed. In the small subfamilies however of Notiomi- 
metides and Dryopthorides, as Avell as in 13 genera of the 
Pentarthrides, 2 of the Onycliollpides, and 10 of the true 
Cossonides (making 30 groups in all, out of the 122), it 
is either altogether imtraceable, or else so far reduced in 
dimensions as to be detected with difficulty ; and it will be 
seen by a reference to my tabular synopsis that I have made 
use of this fact in locating the particular types to which it 
applies. 
The curious instability which is indicated amongst the 
representatives of the present family, in the exact number 
of the funiculus joints, is more than paralleled by the 
occasional obliteration (Avhether wholly or in part) of the 
organs of sight. The only member however of the true 
Cossonides in which the eyes, so far as I am aware, are 
absent, is the Lipommata ccdcaratuni, — a pilose, Phlcco- 
ph(i(jus-V\k.Q Cossonid, of slightly burrowing propensities, 
which lives about the roots of sand-plants in the island of 
Porto Santo, of the JNIadeiran archipelago. But in the 
anomalous subfamily Onycholipides, no less than three 
genera (^out of the four) — namely Onycholips, Raymondio- 
nymus, and Alaocyba — are totally blind ; and the Aus- 
tralian Ilalorhynchus, which (although pertaining to the 
latter) is exactly osculant between the OnyclioUpidcs and 
Pentarthrides, is in a similar condition. And there are 
four other Pentartlu'ideous types — namely Pcntatemnus, 
Pscndomesoxemia, Amaurorrhinns, and Heteropsis, — as 
well as the single exponent of the abnormal subfamily 
