Deronectea deprcssas, Fah.., and clegans, Panzer. 299 



type mi^^lit exist in this comifry. Fubiiciiw, in \\\a ' Eutomo- 

 logia Systematica/ fra({Uontly mentions where liis type- 

 specimens are to be fouiul, but in tlie case of " Dytiacu* 

 depresana " lie j;ives no audi intormution ; and an exjimination 

 of the Bntiksian Collection in the Natural History Museum 

 and of (rraham Kerr's publiHJied liat of Fabiician type;* 

 in the (jlas^ow University Museum failed to discover its 

 location. It is presumably in Copenhagen or some other 

 Scandinavian museum if it is siill in existence. 



As to Panzer's type, I could get no information, and in the 

 absence of the tv|)e9 I had to fall back up')n the literatun*. 1 

 therefore started with Fabricius's Ent. Syst., and examined 

 most of the important works from 17'J2 up to the present 

 time, and I have looked up more than forty references in the 

 course of this examination. Two points have struck me 

 during this part of the work : one is the exceeding vagueness 

 of the original descriptions, which give only colour-characters 

 for the recognition of the species, and the other is that, where 

 subsequent authors have treated de/)ressus and eleg'tns as 

 distinct ««|)ecies, they have mostly shown an extraordinary 

 lack of originality, relying, like their predece-'sors, maitdy 

 upon colour-characters and merely varying the words of the 

 original descrij^tions. 



I have inclmled at the end of this paper a bibliography of 

 the works I have looked up, with, in each case, a short note 

 as to the view taken by tlie autlior, but a short risumi of 

 some of the more important works may be of interest. 



Fabricius's original description was published in 1792 and 

 that of Panzer about 1793 — Payknll, Illiger, and Marsham 

 following in order of date. Thf first onl}' refers to Fabricius's 

 species, without giving any indication as to whether he knew 

 elegana. Illiger describes the colouring of Panzer's species, 

 and then says " the J>. depre^iua appears to bo closely related 

 to this species," showing that he only knew the latter from a 

 description. 



How Mai>ham identified our common British species at 

 eleyans we have no means of knowing, but we can assume 

 that either he did not know depreaaus, which seems probable, 

 or that he regardetl it as distinct from Panzer's 8|)ecie8. 



Duftschmidt seems to have been the first to regard 

 "f/z'^aN*" as a synonym of " (//•/>ressM*," though the remark 

 he makes suggests that he possibly had the latter, since he 

 mentions that whereas Panzer and Illiger describe their 

 species as having the underside rusty red, his specimens have 

 that part black. 



