On the Coleopterous Subfamily D/nastin£e. 15t 



XYII. — Notes on the Coleopterous Subfamily Dynastinae, with 

 Descriptions of new Genera and Species. By Gilbert J. 

 Arrow. 



(Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



[Plates IV. & v.] 



While compiling a Catalogue of the Dynastinse, to be 

 published shortly, I have had occasion to make various 

 synonymical and other notes, and these are here recorded, 

 together with descriptions of a few of the new species con- 

 tained in the collection of the British Museum. 



In Gemminger and Harold's Catalogue the name heivitsoni, 

 Empson, is given as a synonym of Golofa purteri, Hope, with 

 a relerence to Maunder's * Treasury of Natural History ' 

 (1858). In that work it is said that the insect has received 

 the name Asserador heivitsoni in Empson's ' Narrative of 

 S. America.' This work, having been published in 1836, 

 would, if the statement were correct, antedate both the 

 generic and specific names given by Hope in 1837. I have 

 therefore with considerable care searched Empson's * Narra- 

 tive' page by page in the British Museum library, and have 

 satisfied myself that the name quoted does not occur there. 

 Thomson, in his ' Arcana Naturae,' has stated that the name 

 Asserador hewitsoni appears upon an isolated plate, without 

 description. A note in the ' Narrative ' mentions that a 

 portfolio of facsimile sketches was purchasable, but these I 

 have not been able to discover; and as it seems certain that 

 no description of hewitsoni appeared before the publication 

 of Mauuder's ' Treasury,' Hope's names, so long current, 

 may, I think, remain undisturbed. A specimen bearing 

 Empson's proposed name, and apparently his original, is 

 still in our collection. 



It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that the various 

 ''new species" of Dynastes from Dominica named by 

 Mr. A. H. Verrill in his curiously inaccurate papers in the 

 * American Journal of Science ' of 1906 and 1907 indicate 

 nothing more than different phases of male development of 

 the very well-known and variable Dynastes hercules, L. His 

 Dynastes tricornis, as the writer has already discovered, is a 

 Strateyus. The name tricornis has been long preoccupied, 

 but the ''new species" is probably S. vulcanus, F. The 

 long- familiar species Strategus tricornis, Jabl., should, how- 

 ever, be called S. validus, F., a name which has been over- 

 looked. The type of Fabricius (described in his Syst. Ent. 

 1775, p. 6) is a female in the British Museum. 



