340 Mr. G. Lewis on 



series %^. Dorsal (XV) XVI (10) 11, the last spine a 

 little less than ^ the length of head, the soft fin scaly at tlie 

 base. Anal VI (8) 9. Pectoral nearly as long as the head. 

 Caudal rounded. Caudal peduncle about § as long as deep. 

 Body with obscure dark cross-bars ; a dark spot on the 

 origin of the lateral line, another on the operculnm, a third 

 on the middle of the side, and a fourth on the upper part of 

 the base of caudal ; vertical fins with dark spots. 

 Colombia; Venezuela. 



1-2. (128 aud 188 mm.) Baranquilla, Colombia. Kay Thomson, E<|. 



[To be continued.] 



XXXVII. — On new Species of Histeridte and Notices of others. 

 By a. Lewis, F.L.S. 



[Plate X.] 



The object of this paper — the twenty-fifth of the series — is to 

 make a few observations on the ' Catalogue of the Histeridae ' 

 published last March, to describe a few species of interest, 

 and to explain the contents of the Plate now published. 



In the ' Catalogue^ I did not include the ''catalogue-names" 

 of Dejean or Marseul. Marseul gave over fifty duplicate 

 names to species in his Catalogue of 1862, because he con- 

 sidered that no two species of the same family should bear 

 similar names ; but this rule only obtains generally as 

 regards genera. The names of Dejean and Marseul are 

 entered in the Munich Catalogue. Some authors, again, 

 have given varietal names to specimens, often unique, and 

 therefore names of individuals, not of races; these names 

 were treated as synonymic. 



I think that Marseul did not always attacli suflScient 

 importance in his arrangement of the genera to the form of 

 tlie mesosternum in the Histeridse ; he placed, for instance, 

 Fachycrcerus and Phelister^ which have a jn'ojecting meso- 

 sternum, between Platysoma and Omalodes, in which tlie 

 mesosternum is emarginate ; but by associating the two 

 former genera witli Prubolosternus and MonopUus, as I have 

 done, the species seem to occupy a more natural position. 



Wiien we find an emarginaticn in the mesosternum of a 

 species of this family we see an insect witli a difierent mode 

 of life to those in which the mesosternum is acuminate or 

 bisinuous, and we can understand the several advantages 



