Mr. A. Murray on Coleoptera from Old Calabar. 153 



XIII, — List of Coleoptera received from Old Calabar, on the West 

 Coast of Africa. By Andrew Murray, Edinburgh. 



Part I. 



A PART of the West Coast of Africa, about the natural produc- 

 tions of which we knew less than many other parts of the coast, 

 has within the last few years been opened up to us by the esta- 

 blishment of a mission station at Old Calabar. This station 

 has been established by the United Presbyterian Church of 

 Scotland; and most fortunately for science, the missionaries 

 and their assistants who have been sent there, have been not 

 only able and diligent in their proper calling, but also intelligent 

 and observing men, who have availed themselves of their posi- 

 tion to make and transmit to this country collections in different 

 branches of natural history. The gentlemen I allude to are 

 the Rev. Hope M. Waddell and the Rev. Mr. Goldie, Mr. W. 

 C. Thomson and Mr, John R. Wylie. From all of these gentle- 

 men collections have been received, from which I have profited, 

 and which have put me in the position of being able to form 

 something like a catalogue of the Coleoptera of that country. 

 I think I may with justice say, that from these sources I possess 

 a larger amount of materials for making up such a catalogue 

 than any other person ; and as a great number of the species 

 are new and curious, and the whole are specially interesting in 

 relation to the geographical distribution of species, I propose to 

 give a list of the whole which I have received, intercalating de- 

 scriptions of those which are new, with figures of the most 

 striking. I shall have my labours in this respect a good deal 

 curtailed by some of our most eminent entomologists, who are 

 working at Monographs of particular groups. To them I have 

 thought it right to entrust the new species in each of their de- 

 partments; and these have either been already described and 

 published, or are in course of being so. M. Chevrolat has de- 

 scribed about fifty of the new Longicorns; M. Boheman in his 

 Supplement will describe between twenty and thirty new Cas- 

 sida ; Mr. Westwood occupies himself with the new Megalopida, 

 and M. Suffrian with the new Cryptocephalidm ; and my new 

 Elateridce are in the hands of M. Candeze, the first volume of 

 whose work on that great family will probably ere this is printed 

 be in the hands of entomologists. 



I am very sensible that in the following pages I shall un- 

 avoidably occasionally fall into the error of describing as new, 

 species which have been already described by other authors. 

 The immense number of descriptions of species scattered through 

 foreign Journals and Transactions of Societies, renders it hope- 



