COLEOPTEKA. 37 



antennae consists of but three joints, where the labrum forms a trans- 

 versal square, and the maxillpe have three strong terminal teeth, and 

 two on the inner side in place of the interior lobe. 



The species, in which tlie club is composed of five joints, the labrum 

 is very short, and the maxillae have but two teeth, one terminal and 

 the other on the inner side, for his genus Paxillus. 



Finally, in his family of the Passalides, he unites to the preceding 

 the genus Chiron, which we have placed in the tribe of the Copro- 

 phagi *. 



These Insects are foreign to Europe, and, as it Avould appear, to 

 Africa, being chiefly found in the eastern parts of Asia, and particu- 

 larly in America. Madame Merian says, that the larva of the species 

 figured by her lives on the roots of the sweet potato. The perfect 

 Insect is not imcommon in the sugar-houses f. 



In the second general section of the Coleoptera, or the Hetero- 

 MERA, we find five joints in the four first tarsi, and one less in the two 

 last. 



These Insects all feed on vegetable substances. M, Leon Dufour 

 — Anna!, des Sc. Nat., VI, p. 181 — has observed that the texture of 

 the male organs of generation approximates them to those of the 

 Scarabeeides and Clavicorncs; their testes consist of spermatic cap- 

 sules or sacculi. 



AVe will divide this section into four great families :|:, the two first 

 of which are somewhat analogous to the first pentamerous Coleoptera, 

 in an excrementitious apparatus discovered in several of their genera 

 by the same savant; their chylific ventricle also is frequently covered 

 with papillae. In several of these Insects, we find the vestiges of 

 another secreting apparatus but seldom observed among Coleoptera, 

 that which is denominated the salivary apparatus. The hepatic ves- 

 sels, as in the Pentamera, with but few exceptions, are six in number, 

 and have two insertions distant from each other: " at one extremity," 

 says ^I. Dufour, " they are inserted by six insulated ends round the 

 collar, which terminates the chylific ventricle ; the other opens into 

 the origin of the caecum by trunks, varying in number according to 

 the family and genus." 



In some, where the elytra are generally solid and hard, and the 

 hooks of the tarsi are almost always simple, the head is ovoid or oval, 

 susceptible of being received posteriorly into the thorax, or sometimes 



* Hor. Eutorn. I, p. 105, et seq. 



t See Fabricius, Syst. Eleuth., II, p. 155: Web., Obser. Eiitom. ; Palis, de 

 Beauv., Insect. d'Afr. et d'Ara^r. ; Lat., Gencr. Crust, et Insect., II, p. 136; and 

 Schoenh., Synon., I, iii, p. 331, and Append., p. 143, 144. 



J In a natural order, the fourth is connected with the first by the Helopii which 

 Linnaeus places in his genus Tenebrio. It is also evident that the Tenebrios lead to 

 Phaleria, Diaperis, &c., or to our second family. 



