164 BRITISH BEETLES. 



readily, and with a metallic sound, in the hot sunshine ; 

 alighting on felled trees, and readily tucking up its 

 legs and falling to the ground on the approach of the 

 collector. 



The species of Abdera, small, cylindrical, and banded 

 with pale testaceous, have the penultimate joint of the 

 tarsi truncate, and very small spurs to the tibiae; they 

 are found in dead boughs of trees, and in the short half- 

 rotten stumps left on trees where boughs have been 

 broken off. Hypulus quercmm y a narrow, elegantly 

 spotted and banded insect, with robust antennae, occurs 

 in old wood in some numbers when found, for it is very 

 local ; and the fragile Conopalpus may be taken under 

 the same conditions as Abdera, though it has been also 

 found in flowers, where it might readily be passed over 

 for a pallid Telephorus by the incipient Coleopterist. In 

 this genus the antennae have only ten joints, and the 

 apical joint of the maxillary palpi is very narrow and 

 elongate. 



Osphya bipunctata, exceedingly local, being only found 

 in flowers, etc., at Monk's Wood, has very much the ge- 

 neral appearance of a Telephorus, but with the hinder 

 femora in the male much inflated and arched, as in 

 (Edemera ; the two sexes, also, differ considerably in size 

 and colour ; the male being usually the largest and black, 

 and the female testaceous. As in many instances before 

 noticed, these marked sexual disparities exhibit several 

 modifications; undeveloped males occurring in which 

 the inflation of the hinder femora disappears, the size 

 is diminished, etc. 



The family of PYROCHROAD^E contains two genera 

 which present but few points of resemblance, except in 

 the larval condition ; indeed, one of them (Pytho) has 



