Mr. A. S. Woodward on the Myriacantliidffi. 275 



Narrow, reddish yellow, shining, rather depressed, nearly 

 parallel, upper surface minutely strigose, visible only under 

 the microscope ; forehead with two oblique sulci between and 

 near to the antenna? ; thorax at the sides slightly sinuate ; 

 each elytron has a sutural well-marked stria, which continues 

 round the entire wing-case, the other striaj are punctate- 

 striate, the punctures corresponding with those on tlie head and 

 thorax in being elongate ; the pygidium is clothed sparsely 

 and irregularly with fulvous hairs, except at the apex, where 

 they are rather closely set. The mandibles and mouth- 

 organs are darker in colour than the rest of the body. 



I found two examples of this species in June 1881 at Nara, 

 near the Kasuga no Miya. One was crawling on a stump of 

 a lai-ge oak which had been felled about two years before ; the 

 other was close to it, resting in the orifice of a hole made by a 

 wood-borer, with its antennas and mandibles alone protruding. 

 At the least disturbance it retired out of reach, and a man 

 had to be sent to the village for a large axe, and eight or ten 

 inches of hard timber had to be cut away before it was cap- 

 tured. It seems to me that these insects must enter a hole 

 head first and go to the end of it, where perhaps a cell widens 

 out and within which the beetle can turn and retrace its steps. 

 The structure of the body suggests that it can almost double 

 itself up, and such a form seems compatible with reversing its 

 position in a very small space. It could not turn round in 

 the hole where it rested, as its own girth was nearly the size 

 of the bore in the wood, and I cannot believe that it enters 

 the hole backwards. Facts connected with wood-boring 

 Coleoptera, and those which follow in tlieir tracks, lead up to 

 some of the most interesting problems of natural history. 



Note. — I find that the name Renia, proposed by me (Ann. 

 & Mag. Nat. Hist. (5) xv. p. 467, 1885), is used in Lepido- 

 ptera ; I wish therefore to substitute Reninus for my genus. 

 The two names will come close together in an alphabetical list. 



XXXVI. — On the Myriacanthidae — an Extinct Family of Ghi- 

 man-oid Fishes. By A. Smith Woodward, F.G.S., 

 F.Z.S., of the British Museum (Natural History). 



Among the Mesozoic Ichthyodorulites still awaiting elucida- 

 tion is a remarkable spine, frequently met with in the Lower 

 Lias of Lyme Regis, described by Agassiz under the name of 



19* 



