ANOMALA. 129 



without in any way assisting those concerned with the Indian 

 fauna, put serious obstacles in the path of those who have 

 occasion in the future to study the numerous allied inhabitants 

 of other regions of which we are as yet almost entirely ignorant. 

 Many entomologists are in the habit of multiplying genera 

 wherever the number of species ranged under a single name 

 appears to them to be too large, but the distinctions in many 

 such cases are so slight and so liable to become obliterated as 

 additional forms become known that no real advantage is gained. 

 The more numerous the allied species occurring in Nature the 

 less appreciable are the breaks separating them and the larger 

 must be the assemblages which are the real equivalents of the 

 genera recognised in other groups of animals less numerous in 

 speeies. Although the limits of genera must be arbitrarily fixed, 

 they are worthless if applicable only to the representatives from 

 a particular region, and any general dismemberment of a wide- 

 spread genus in a work devoted to a special fauna seems to me 

 ill-advised. The existence of a multitude of species under a single 

 generic name certainly renders it very desirable to reduce them 

 to order, but it is certain that, whether all or only a part of the 

 species are dealt with, it is quite possible to bring them into an 

 orderly system, by which they may with due care be accurately 

 determined, without the introduction of new names which inav 

 become, as an ever-increasing number does become, a mere 

 encumbrance in the future. 



There is one feature which all who have attempted a subdivision 

 of Anomala have agreed in regarding as an important generic 

 character, viz., the presence or absence of a mesosternal process, 

 but, after a long-continued effort to accept the existence of a 

 process as distinguishing a separate genus (Spilota), I have been 

 finally obliged to abandon it, the Indian species alone showing 

 this part in practically every stage, from the slender spike of 

 A. auronitens to its virtual disappearance in A. pyrosctlis. Casey 

 has attempted to meet this difficulty in the American species by 

 using, in combination with the presence or absence of a process, 

 the persistence or otherwise of the suture between the meso- 

 and metasternum. This suture he finds to be obliterated in 

 the group with a produced mesosternum ; but, while this is 

 true of the majority of species, there are certain forms, e.g., 

 A. roselti, Nonfr., and A. isolata, Arrow, in which, though the 

 mesosternum is produced, the suture is not obliterated ; nor is 

 it possible to avoid the dilemma by grouping the recalcitrant 

 species together in yet another genus, for they are certainly not 

 closely related. 



About nine hundred species of Anomala have been described 

 in all, and, in my opinion, in the interests of a practical and con- 

 sistent classification, no alternative at present exists to treating 

 them as a single genus. 



In such an immense mass of species there must be some 

 diversity of habits, but all those of which we have any infor- 



K 



