COLEOPTERA. 



ing the former, or Rhinosimus, to those in which the club is composed 

 of four or five joints *. 



FAMILY IV. 



TRACHELIDES. 



In our second general division and fourth family of Heteromerous 

 Coleoptera, the head is triangular or cordiform, and borne on a sort 

 of neck or pedicle, abruptly formed, beyond which, being as wide at 

 this point as the thorax, or wider, it cannot enter the cavity of the 

 latter. The body is most commonly soft, the elytra are flexible, with- 

 out strise, sometimes very short, and a little inclined in others. The 

 maxillae are never unguiculated. The joints of the tarsi are fre- 

 quently entire, and the hooks of the last bifid. 



Most of the perfect Insects live on different plants, devour their 

 leaves, or suck the nectar of their flowers. Many, when seized, curve 

 their head and fold up their feet as if they Avere dead ; the others are 

 very active. 



We will divide this family into six tribes, forming as many genera. 



In the first, or that of the Lagriari^, the body is elongated and 

 narrower before; the thorax either almost cylindrical or square, or 

 ovoid and truncated; the antennae, inserted near an emargination of 

 the eyes, are simple, filiform, or insensibly enlarged towards the end, 

 most frequently and at least partially granose, the last joint being 

 longer than the preceding ones in the males ; the palpi are thicker at 

 the extremity, and the last joint of those of the maxillae is larger, and 

 in the form of a reversed triangle ; the thighs border on an oval and 

 are clavate ; the tibiae are elongated and narrow, the two anterior, at 

 least, arcuated; the penultimate joint of the tarsi is bilobate, and the 

 hooks of the last are neither incised nor dentated. 



The species indigenous to France are found in woods, on various 

 plants ; their body is soft, their elytra are flexible, and like the^Meloes, 

 the Cantharides, when taken, counterfeit death. 



This tribe is formed of the genus 



Lagria, Fab. — Chrysomela, Lin. — Cantharis, Geoff. 



Those species, in which the antennae gradually enlarge, and are either 

 wholly or partly almost granose, with the last joint ovoid or oval ; in 

 which the head projects but little before, and is prolonged and insen- 



* See Lat., Gener. Crust, et Insect., II, p. 231; Oliv., Col., and Encyc. 

 Method. ; Dej., Catalogue, &c,, p. 77, and Gyll., Insect. Suec, I, ii, p. 640, and 

 III, p. 715. 



