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Eremnides, and placed among the Rhyparosomides, where Pascoe 
has placed Dysostines. 
EREMNINI. 
This aggregate of species is distinguished from the Leptopsint 
by M. Lacordaire by only one character that is stated as constant 
and reliable, viz., that the rostral scrobes are not directed down- 
ward. This character, although slight, is one that (at any rate in 
many Cwrculionidw) seems to be an important one, 7e., the 
direction of the scrobes does not seem to vary so much as many 
other characters do in species that seem to be in reality closely 
related to each other. It must be confessed, however, that it 
does not appear to be so satisfactory in its application to the 
Australian Hremmnini (at least those known to me) as might be 
wished, since its application distributes between two subfamilies 
species that certainly do not seem as if they ought to be so 
widely separated. Among the Adelognathi furnished with ocular 
lobes in my collection are three species whose scrobes are not 
directed downward, that is, the lower margin of the scrobe, if 
continued hindward, would not pass beneath the eye, but would 
cut it, or at least touch its lower extremity. In one of them the 
head exactly agrees with the figure of the head of Pephricus in 
Tr. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1870, pl. v., fig. 72; in the other two the 
scrobe is placed still higher. Apart from the structure of the 
scrobes these species have decidedly the facies of small Leptop- 
sini, but that structure certainly seems to require their being 
referred to the Hremninz. 
As regards the genus to which these species should be referred, 
I think they might, with fair reason, be treated as representing 
two new genera, as their facies is distinctly of two types and very 
different from that of the already-named Australian Hremnini. 
But as things stand at present—only a very small proportion of 
the Australian Curculionide having been described—it seems to 
me that new genera should be formed only very reluctantly, and 
where there is some extremely salient structural character abso- 
lutely requiring it, as the examination of a long series of species, 
in many instances, shows that characters apparently very satis- 
factory in themselves are nevertheless of little value. As an 
example of this I may mention the number of claws on the tars. 
Mr. Pascoe has, very naturally, regarded the absence of one of 
the two claws as a good generic character in the Hremnini and 
Leptopsini ; nevertheless, I have before me specimens which 
throw great doubt on its value, presenting in a number of small 
Polyphrades-like species a gradwal change in this respect, begin- 
ning with the evidently ¢wo soldered claws of a typical Poly- 
phrades, then passing to a form in which the two claws are more 
