392 Mr. G. A. K. Marshall o« the 



flanks, while the lower segment of the limb.? is nearly white. 

 The tail, too, is shorter and white below, instead of uniformly 

 dusky. 



It is thus obvious that in respect of colour the Bonin deer 

 conies mucii nearer to the Formosan than it does to the dusky 

 Philippine sanibar (I have not a specimen of the larger Luzon 

 sambar with which to compare it). Accordingly, for all I 

 can say to the contrary, it may be an imported breed of the 

 Formosan sambar, dwarfed by the small area of its habitat, 

 l^ut as tiiere is no evidence of this, it may be provisionally 

 regarded as a distinct island race under the name of Cervus 

 (Busa) unicolor bom'nensis, with the female skull in the 

 British Museum as the type. 



LIII. — On the South- African Curculionidie of the Oeniis 

 Cossonus, Clairv. By GUY A. K. MARSHALL, F.Z.S. 



The genus Cossonus has practically a world-wide distribution, 

 but, as at present known, is better represented in America 

 than anywhere else. Only eight species have hitherto been 

 recorded from Southern Africa, and six more are described in 

 the present paper. But even with this increase it seems 

 probable that the number of South-African species might 

 readily be doubled when the area is more thoroughly worked. 

 The timber-belts of the Transkei and Pondoland, the yellow- 

 wood forests of Natal, the heavily wooded regions which 

 adjoin the eastern littoral from Zulu land northward into the 

 tropics, are all practically virgin ground for the coleopterist, 

 and when adequately explored will doubtless yield many new 

 forms. 



These insects seem, as a rule, to be but poorly represented 

 in collections, for unless specially searched for they are not 

 likely to be met with by the casual collector. All our species 

 with whose habits I am acquainted live under the bark of 

 decaying trees; but they seem to require damp surroundings, 

 and thus in the drier parts of the country they are only to be 

 found in trees which are subject to moist decay, such as 

 Euphorbias and a few soft-wooded species like the Erythrinas. 

 Jn these latter I have only found them when the trees were 

 being killed by the attacks of certain Longicorn or Biiprestid 

 larvje, the Cossoni being usually found in the moist decaying 

 matter left in the tracks of tiiese larv» just beneath the bark. 

 With them also occur a few other Curculionida?, such as 



