164 Memoirs on the Coleoptera 



very moderately separated, the prosternum short and nearly flat 

 before them, the femora long, parallel and armed beneath with a 

 small erect acute spine or tooth, both the femora and long slender 

 tibiae smooth, polished and glabrous; the third tarsal joint is 

 broadly dilated and the claws are slender, free and widely diverging. 

 The basal thoracic lobe is obsolete and the scutellum is parabolic 

 and in close contact with the elytra; it is smooth but rather prom- 

 inently convex. The type may be described as follows: 



Neplaxa illustris n. sp. — Stout, suboval, very convex, polished, smooth and 

 glabrous throughout, dark, the elytra with strong violaceous, the legs, beak and 

 under surface with dark green or bluish, metallic lustre, the prothorax not at all 

 metallic, pale rufous throughout, with piceous tubulation; beak very feebly 

 arcuate, thick, as long as the head and prothorax, loosely punctate, strongly at 

 the sides, not separated from the head by an evident transverse impression, the 

 head finely, sparsely punctate, with notably convex eyes, which are separated by 

 barely more than half the width of the beak; there is a small deep puncture 

 between them; antennae long, slender and piceous; prothorax evenly and rather 

 strongly convex in lateral profile, a third wider than long, the sides somewhat 

 strongly rounded, less so and more parallel gradually toward base, the feeble and 

 gradually formed truncate apical tubulation at least four-sevenths as wide as the 

 base; surface impunctate and very smooth, the middle of the basal margin 

 moderately rounded, not evidently prominent; scutellum convex, a little longer 

 than wide, very smooth; elytra subevenly and obtusely oval, a fifth longer than 

 wide, fully a third wider than the prothorax and not quite twice as long; humeri 

 rapidly rounding to the base, but not laterally prominent; striae fine and sub- 

 obsolete, but with distinct and somewhat widely separated punctures; abdomen 

 smooth, broadly impressed basally in the type. Length 5.3 mm.; width 3.4 

 mm. A single specimen, taken somewhere in Brazil and sent to me by Desbro- 

 chers des Loges. 



This species seems to be completely isolated, and there is none 

 other known to me with which it can be even remotely compared. 

 The mes-epimera ascend obliquely along the humeri, but in continua- 

 tion of the very even curve from the middle of the met-episterna to 

 the elytral base and they are not visible from a dorsal viewpoint. 



Vallius n. gen. 



In this genus the body is in great part glabrous, sometimes with 

 sparse slender squamules throughout beneath, and often with larger, 

 and very slender, widely scattered white squamules on the elytra. 

 The beak is moderately slender, evenly arcuate, strongly sculptured 

 and separated from the head by a distinct depression, simple in 

 piceipennis, but abruptly sulciform in the dispersus type. The an- 

 tenna? are medial, the first funicular joint distinctly longer than 

 the next two, the club moderate, with the basal segment slightly 

 less {dispersus) to distinctly more {piceipennis) than half the mass. 



The femora are mutic, the prosternun narrowly but in general 

 somewhat deeply grooved, the coxse narrowly separated and, before 



