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stant a nature, that disturbing agencies have little or no 

 power to divert them from their typical states. Still, 

 there are occasional facts on record, which would tend 

 to prove that even these are not altogether exempt from 

 the deranging force of certain contingencies from with- 

 out : the number of the antennal joints, for instance, in 

 the tribes where those organs are multiarticulate, is said 

 to vary ; but how far this may be dependent on physical 

 influences, I am not in a position to decide. The con- 

 nateness of the elytra, again, is a character which we 

 may at any rate define as 5^6 -structural ; and this I 

 have myself noticed, at times, to fluctuate, according to 

 the circumstances and conditions of the respective 

 localities in which the particular species obtain. Such 

 is eminently the case with the universal Harpalus (the 

 H. vividus, Dej.) of the Madeiran Group. Speaking of 

 this peculiarity, in my volume on the Coleoptera of 

 those islands, I made the following remarks : " But per- 

 haps its most singular character, and in which it differs 

 from every other Harpalus with which I am acquainted, 

 consists in the tendency of its elytra to become united 

 or soldered together. I say 'the tendency/ because 

 it is not always the case that they are joined (which, 

 since the law exists at all, is perhaps the more remark- 

 able), although in most instances, especially in localities 

 much exposed and but slightly elevated above the sea- 

 shore, they are. I have examples, however, from the 

 upper as well as the lower regions, in which both states 

 are represented ; and others again in which the elytra 



