396 Rev. H. S. Gorham's revision of the 



Of the middle category, Japan has hitherto furnished 

 us with some four genera, two of which, Eros and 

 Platycis, are well-known Palsearctic and Nearctic forms ; 

 and the other two are Indo-Malay forms, which I should 

 regard as Eroid genera, but less specialised, and nearer 

 therefore to Plateroid forms than Eros is itself. 



We have therefore in Japan a sort of picture or 

 sample, as it were, of the whole Lycida. The number 

 of species is small (only eighteen) if compared with 

 those extending over a similar district of volcanic and 

 forest-land, say in Tropical Central America, but fully 

 equal to that of North America between similar latitudes, 

 where some twenty-five occur over the whole of the 

 United States, and large compared with that of Europe, 

 from the whole of which only twelve species are known. 



An attempt to summarise the facts here noticed leads 

 one rather to negative conclusions, and such I think will 

 be generally found to be the case. The Japanese does 

 not appear to be a derived fauna, for the number of 

 endemic forms is large both in proportion to the number 

 of species and the size of the district explored. Ex- 

 tinction of species or of genera does not appear to have 

 gone on so much as in the European side of the Palse- 

 arctic region. We have several genera of my first cate- 

 gory pointing to an early settlement of this family here ; 

 while one genus is so remarkable as to suggest that it, 

 like the anomalous genus Homalisus, represents the 

 ancient synthetic type from which both Lycidce and 

 Telephoridcs and other sections of the Malacodermata 

 have sprung, — I mean a new genus which I characterise 

 in the present paper, but of which the proper location is 

 doubtful, viz., Pristolycus. 



In short, there is nothing in the Japanese genera of 

 this section of the Coleoptera to lead us to think any 

 movement of the species has taken place. One or two 

 genera, as Lycostomus and Metriorhynchus, are the off- 

 shoots or exponents of the Indo-Malay and the Austro- 

 Malay types of development respectively, but on the 

 whole the reverse seems the fact, viz., that the fauna of 

 Japan is really endemic, and that its apparent relation- 

 ship with the North American fauna will be explained 

 by referring such genera as are found in common to the 

 primitive types, which are universally distributed where 

 not extinguished by local depauperation. 



