Mr. A. Murray on Coleoptera from Old Calabar. 317 



Only a female specimen received. The above description 

 therefore applies only to the female ; but, as it is almost iden- 

 tical with M. brasiliense, I have taken the characters of the 

 male specified in the characters of the genus from one of that 

 species. 



This is another example of a Brazilian form occurring at Old 

 Calabar. 



I may take this occasion to say that I think the family to 

 which this species belongs (the Lymexylonidse) is not here in 

 its right place. Although actually pentamerous, it appears to 

 me that the species composing it are Heteromera in disguise, 

 and that their place is next the genera I have above mentioned. 

 On the same principle that botanists disregard the rules of the 

 Linnsean system when they run counter to natural affinity, 

 entomologists ought, I think, more frequently than they do, 

 to disregard the tarsal characters when inconsistent with other 

 indications of affinity. Westwood (with his admirable flair 

 entomol(}giqiie, that instinct for affinity which so rarely errs) 

 acknowledged this relationship betv^^eeu the Lymexylonidae and 

 Melandryada3 in his ' Modern Classification of Insects ;' and 

 Lacordaire, in alluding to his remarks, also admits the analogy. 

 Both, too, in placing the family in or near its present position, 

 admit that it is not placed satisfactorily. It comes awkwardly 

 in between Ptinus and Clerus (where Lacordaire has placed it), 

 and not much better between Ptinus and Bosb'ichus (where 

 Westwood has put it). But if it is to come among the Penta- 

 mera, there is no better place for it. They have bent to that 

 artificial test ; but in doing so they have removed it from a 

 group of insects like it in facies and habit, of similar structure, 

 and endowed with some of the exceptional peculiarities which 

 are to be found in this family. That group is a cluster of 

 Ileteromerous genera belonging to the Melandryadffi. All 

 of them have the underside of the body and legs and tarsi 

 (except in the number of articles) constructed on the same 

 principle, and that a principle deviating considerably from that 

 of the Pentamera. Some of them, too, as Serrojjalpus, have a 

 similarity in outward appearance to the Lymexylonidse. In spe- 

 cies of that genus and others of the Heteromera not far distant 

 from it, " Nature has played strange antics " with the maxillary 

 palpi, turning them into curiously serrated organs in Serro- 

 palpus, into strange long flexible trunks like the antennre of 

 Blatf.a in Nemoynatha, and into distorted indescribable masses 

 in Cerocoma; and in the Lymexylonidee an analogous distortion 

 of these organs into flabellated plates occurs. I do not remem- 

 ber any similar abnormal vagary appearing in the palpi of any 

 other group of Coleoptera, except in the Palpicornes and in some 



