Snarp—On New Zealand Coleoptera. 385 
This species is very difficult to describe, owing to the undecided character of 
the sculpture; but the minute eyes, and the two peculiar depressions between the 
front coxze will render its recognition easy. 
Greymouth. Helms. 
Briroma. 
Bitoma sellata, n. sp.—Angusta, oblonga, subdepressa, fusco-rufa, supra fusco- 
ochracea, elytris plaga commune post scutellum nigro-fusca, antennis pedibusque 
testaceis; prothorace lateribus profunde excisis, lobis angustis longe separatis ; 
elytris tuberculis parum elevatis subseriatim dispositis. Long. 31 m.m. (Plate 
xu1., fig. 20.) 
Antenne red, club not darker; third jomt much more slender than second, 
and a little shorter than it, but little longer than broad; 4—9 small, similar to 
one another; the two terminal joints forming an abrupt, rather broad club. 
Thorax with uneven surface, and explanate sides, the explanate portion divided 
by very large excisions into three elongate slender lobes, one of which projects 
much forwards and forms the produced very acute front angles, the two others 
project outwards, and the hind angles form a fourth but very minute prominence. 
Elytra not at all explanate at sides, bearing numerous blunt slight tubercles. The 
upper surface is obscurely squamulose and setulose, and there are some minute dark 
marks, in addition to the common dark mark placed some distance behind the 
scutellum and by which the species may be readily recognized. 
This little sect is very strange in Bitoma owing to the deeply rugged sides 
of the thorax, which are like those of Tarphiominus and some of the small Ulonoti ; 
but the two-jointed club of the antenna makes its position at present to be more 
correct in Bitoma, to which genus it is connected, as regards the sides of the 
thorax, by the two species next described. Broun has proposed to separate, under 
the name of Ablabus, those forms allied to Ulonotus by the explanate and indented 
sides of the thorax, but having, like Bitoma, only a two-jointed club: as no 
character is mentioned by which his genus can be separated from Bitoma other 
than the shape of the thorax, and as this in the New Zealand species is too variable 
to serve when used alone as a generic character, I do not adopt the genus at 
present, though I do not think the species here described as Bitoma, or indeed any 
of the New Zealand species, will ultimately prove congeneric with the Kuropean 
type of the genus. 
Greymouth. Helms, No. 289. 
Bitoma auriculata, n. sp.—Oblonga, angustula, ferruginea; capite supra 
antennas fortiter elevato ; prothorace lateribus anterius lobato-prominulis, posterius 
longius denticulatis; elytris tuberculis fasciculatis, parum elevatis, seriatim dis- 
positis. Long. 3$ m.m. 
3F 2 
