24 KUTELIN.E. 



great loss to the Hawaiian sugar-growers, the larvae feeding upon 

 the cane-roots and destroying the plants. This species has an 

 enormously wide distribution in the East, and probably, like many 

 of the numerous sugar-pests, feeds normally upon grass-roots ; but 

 it appears to be much less common in India than Adoretus versutus 

 and several other species which are extremely abundant, and are 

 found in Calcutta to defoliate cultivated roses, cannas, etc. 

 Adoretus compressus has been successfully checked in the Hawaiian 

 Islands by artificially infecting it with a fungoid growth. 



Dr. Ojiaus has stated that practically all leaf-feeding ttUTBMHJi 

 will feed with alacrity upon bananas and other soft fruits when 

 opportunity occurs, but I have found no record of any damage 

 caused by Indian species to fruit or flowers. As to the habits of 

 the vast majority, however, we are in complete ignorance. The 

 manner of life, even of such a large and familiar genus as Popillia, 

 is absolutely unknown, as well as that of genera like Rhinyptia, 

 Peperonota, Didrepanephorus, and Peltonotus. which, from their 

 structural peculiarities, may be reasonably supposed to have corre- 

 spondingly peculiar habits. There is a curious tendency, which 

 repeatedly recurs in different sections of EUTELIN^E, for the 

 clypeus to be narrowed to a more or less pointed snout. This 

 is characteristic of Tropiorrhynchus, Rhinyptia, Adorrhinyptia 

 and Oxyadoreius, but it also occurs in one species of Popillia 

 (P. aeuta). Not being accounted for by relationship for these 

 different species and genera are widely separated from each 

 other it must be supposed that they have some habit in common 

 for whicli this is an adaptation, but which has never yet been 

 discovered. 



Distribution and Classification. 



Although perhaps not occurring in the immense multitudes of 

 many of the MELOLOJSTHUS*^, and therefore economically of less 

 importance than those, the EUTELIN^E are still very abundant 

 and very destructive, their Oriental representatives greatly out- 

 numbering in species and individuals the two subfamilies dealt 

 with in my previous volume. This abundance is due chiefly to 

 the prevalence of two great genera, Anomala and Adoretus, which 

 seem to reach their maximum of luxuriance in the Indian region. 

 Of a total number of between two and three thousand species of 

 EuTELiNjE known altogether, 398 are here recorded from our 

 region, of which 261 belong 1o these two genera. In the great 

 forest-regions of the New World very many species of EUTELIN^ 

 are found living and feeding in their early stages in decaying logs 

 and stumps of trees ; but in the Old World this seems to be the 

 habit of comparatively few. Probably all or most of the PARAS- 

 TASIINI live in that way, but they are rare insects, and the species 

 are not numerous, although amongst them are included the 

 strangest forms in the whole subfamily. An immense majority 

 of the Old World EUTELINJE belong to the ANOMALINI and 

 AUOBETIM. Although difleting coTisiderably in important points 



