8 Mr. F. P. Pascoe on some new or lUtle-hiown 



Tiblis trigonatEe. Tarsi qiiatuor- vel quinque-articulati, articulis tribus 

 primis dilatatis^ brevissimis. Corpus depressum. 



The curious little insect constituting this genus belongs to the 

 subfamily EhizojyJiar/hice, hitherto composed of Rhizophagus only, 

 but to which I would also refer Europs^ Woll., and Nomophloeus^ and 

 Hesperohcenus, Motsch.f The two latter, however, appear to me to 

 be identical. There are several discrepancies among authors in their 

 descriptions of Bhizophagus. In the first place, Erichson denies that 

 there are two lobes to the maxilla, as Curtis had represented ; but 

 M. J. du Yal says that in this he is most certainly in error. Again, 

 M. Lacordaii'e allows only ten joints to the antennae, the ninth and 

 tenth forming the club. M. J. du Yal gives eleven ; but in the two 

 species which he has figured in his great work (' Coleopt. d'Europe ') 

 twelve are represented, as is the case also in Mr. Curtis's plate. As 

 M. J. du Yal states, there are unquestionably two lobes to the 

 maxilla; and as unquestionably, I should say, are the antennae 

 twelve-jointed, as MM. Curtis and Migneaux have represented, — the 

 last forming a little knob on the eleventh; but the two, although 

 minute, are perfectly distinct. Exception may be taken that these 

 are not true articulations, especially the last ; but in any case the 

 ninth has nothing to do with the club. They are here described as 

 12-jointed, as I cannot understand on what principle the last is to 

 be ignored any more than the one preceding it. The line of punc- 

 tures, which form a sort of oval on the prothorax, recalls the impres- 



* Whilst these sheets were passing through the press, I have had the oppor- 

 tunity of examining for the first time Dr. Leconte's ' Classification of the Coleo- 

 ptera of North America.' In this work HesperohcBnus and Nomophlceus are placed 

 in the new family " Monotomidie," which is "at once" separated from all 

 Nitidulidse by the " form of the anterior coxae " (rounded in the former, transverse 

 in the latter). Under the microscope it appeared to me that in some a transverse 

 form was more or less assumed when the leg was thrown backwards ; this was 

 the case with the large, apparently rounded coxai of Crine ; but in Europs they 

 are decidedly transverse. It is only necessary to examine the more recent ento- 

 mological works (particularly the ' Genera des Coleopteres d'Europe,' passim) to 

 see the wide divergence of statements in reference to mere matters of fact, where 

 they concern the minute structures. On this account I hesitate trusting im- 

 plicitly to these delicate characters, so difficult in most cases to realize. 



t I have been unable to procure Colonel Motschulsky's ' Etudes Ento- 

 mologiques,' in which, I presume, these genera were proposed. I believe the 

 work was never regularly in the market, and can only be procured in an indirect 

 manner. It is a question how far this is a puhlication. I have seen portions of 

 the work in the library of the Linnean Society, but have not met with any indica- 

 tions of the two genera in question. I have, however, received type-specimens 

 through M- Schaufuss, of Dresden. 



