454 Mr. C. J. Gahan on the Genus Goniopleura. 



Algeria and Central Asia so far as mammals are concerned *, 

 and it is probable that we have in this southern fringe to the 

 " Pal^arctic " Region a zone corresponding with the Sonoran 

 Region of N. America, similarly interposed between the 

 Boreal Region and the tropical ones south of it, and perhaps 

 once similarly distinct from those to the north and south, 

 however it is now obscured by the migrations and other modi- 

 fications induced in the west by the sinking of the Mediter- 

 ranean and in the east by the rise of the Thibetan plateau. 

 Such speculations must, however, be reserved until our know- 

 ledge of the exact distribution of the mammals of the Old 

 World is enormously advanced and in some slight degree 

 comparable to that which in America has enabled Dr. Mei-riam 

 to make his valuable and far-reaching observations on the 

 faunistic regions of that hemisphere. 



LIV. — Note on the Genus Goniopleura, Westfcood, loith the 

 Description of a new Species. By C. J. Gahan, M.A. 



The genus Goniopleura contains some of the most striking 

 and remarkable species among the whole of the Pliytophagous 

 Coleoptera; but, strangely enough, none of the authors who 

 have ijeen more especially engaged in the study of this group 

 of beetles succeeded in discovering the true affinities of the 

 genus. Westwood, its founder, contented himself by stating 

 that it came near Chrysomela. Clark, who described the second 

 species, referred the genus without further comment to the 

 subfamily Galerucinse. Subsequent writers, with the single 

 exception of Chapuis, do not seem to have questioned this 

 position. But even Chapuis, though he recognized in the 

 genus certain Eumolpidous characteristics, did not venture to 

 remove it from the Galerucin^, but formed for it a special 

 group — the Goniopleurites — which he placed at the end of 

 this stibfamily. 



Having been recently engaged in studying the genus, I 

 find its characters such that I have no hesitation in assigning 

 it to the subfamily Eumolpinas, where it has a very close ally 

 in the genus Aulexis of Baly. The antenna? of Goniopleura 

 are as widely separated at their points of insertion as in many 

 genera of Eumolpinse, and more widely than in any genus of 

 Galerucinffi ; so that I fail to appreciate Chapuis's objection 

 to placing it in the Eumolpinae on account of the approxima- 



* Witness the distribution of the genera Meriones, Otonycteris, &c. 



