58 Mr. C. J. Gahan — Notes on Cleridse. 



exact limits of the two families are given, I can only con- 

 jecture that this new view is the outcome of my friend 

 Prof. Lameere's remarks concerning the Cleridse in his 

 1 Notes pour la Classification des Coleopteres/ published in 

 1900. u It is in effect quite impossible," he says, " to 

 maintain the family Cleridse as it is generally adopted at the 

 present day." " The Corynetinse having retained the lateral 

 margin of the prothorax cannot be descended from the 

 Clerinse, which have lost it ; on the other hand, the latter 

 cannot be derived from the Corynetinse, since tliey still 

 possess a well-developed fourth joint in the tarsi." "It is 

 manifest," he continues, " that the Clerinse are descended 

 from Melyridse, and equally manifest that the Corynetinse 

 are also descended from Melyridse, but from different 

 Melyridse though near akin to the ancestors of the Clerinse." 



I am not convinced by this argument. For while I admit 

 it to be highly improbable (and not merely on the grounds 

 stated by Prof. Lameere) that the Clerinse are derived from 

 the Corynetinse, I see no reason why the latter may not be 

 derived from the foimer. The lateral margin of the pro- 

 thorax, even supposing it not to have been present in the 

 predecessors of existing Clerinse, may quite conceivably 

 have arisen as a secondary development. It is often very 

 much more fully developed in some of the later and more 

 specialized groups of a family than it is in the more primitive 

 ones. Compare, for example, the Cassidinse with the Crio- 

 cerinse in the family Chrysomelidse. There appears to me to 

 be, on the whole, a much closer relationship between the 

 Clerinse and the Corynetinse than there is between either and 

 the Melyridse ; and this would hardly be the case if they were 

 derived from different Melyrid ancestors, though possibly it 

 might be explained on the theory of convergence of 

 characters. 



More plausible to me seems Prof. Lameere's further 

 suggestion that all three — the Clerinse, Corynetinse, and 

 Melyridse — should constitute a single family. The characters 

 that separate the Cleridse from some at least of the Melyridse 

 are very slight, although perhaps not more slight than those 

 which distinguish the Melyridse from some of the Malaco- 

 dermata. But I am afraid that Lameere's suggestion, if 

 followed to its logical conclusion, might lead us too far, and 

 so I prefer to regard the Cleridse as a separate family con- 

 stituted very much as it was left by Lacordaire, but with the 

 exclusion of a few genera admitted by him, and the addition 

 of a great number of genera described since his time. 



The characters on which Lacordaire relied for the sub- 



