68 Mr. C. J. Gahan — Xotes on Cleiidse. 



appendiculate tarsal claws, differences accompanied by a 

 marked difference in the general facies of the insects, and 

 which to my mind are of more importance than the number 

 of joints in the antennae, whether 10 or 11, the character 

 recently used by Herr Schenkling for dividing the genus 

 into two sections. 



It is a remarkable fact that, although this character — the 

 number of joints in the antenna? — is largely used as a dis- 

 tinction between various other genera in the same group, I 

 have more often than not found the number to be inaccu- 

 rately stated. Thus Lacordaire, criticising the statements 

 of his predecessors in reference to Ichnea. Cast., proceeds to 

 say that in all the species of Ichnea, without exception, he 

 had counted 11 joints in the antennae. Gorham, in dealing 

 Avith the Central-American species of the same genus (' Bio- 

 logia Centrali-Americana/ Coleopt. iii. 2, p. 178), divided 

 them into two sections with these characters : — a. Antennae 

 distinctly 11-jointed; b. Antennae apparently 10-jointed. 

 I have looked at the antennae in all of these Central-American 

 species w r ith great care, both with a good lens and under the 

 microscope, and in no species of the first section could I find 

 more than ten joints, while in all the species of the second 

 section there are evidently only ten joints, but the ten are all 

 quite distinct, much more so than in the species of the first 

 section. The sections are, nevertheless, natural ones, be- 

 cause the joints composing the funiculus of the antennae are, 

 in the first section, transverse, with the 5th and 7th joints 

 small, whereas the joints of the funiculus are all subcylin- 

 drical in the species of the second section. I have further 

 examined all other species of Ichnea accessible to me, in- 

 cluding the genus type, and, except in two, could make out 

 only ten joints in the antennae : I. batesiana, Gorham, and 

 /. pelonioides, Gorham (the second not more than a variety 

 of the first), have eleven joints; but these two species must 

 have been quite unknown to Lacordaire when he made the 

 statement referred to above. 



The Group Euopliini. — There is hardly any group of 

 insects of the same limited extent in which the phenomenon 

 of mimicry is better displayed than it is by the beetles of 

 this small group. Within its limits are comprised the exact 

 counterparts of various other Coleoptera, belonging chiefly 

 to the families Lycidae, Lampyridae, Telephoridae, Cistelidae, 

 Chrysomelinae, Galerucinae, and Coccinellidse. But, however 

 attractive this may be to the student of mimicry, it becomes 

 somewhat of a nuisance to the systematist, since it tends to 

 create a difficulty in classification by obscuring the natural 



