432 Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston on the 



Acanthomerus, from St. Helena, in some of the Madeiran 

 Caulotrupides, and in Oodemas, from the Sandwich 

 Islands, a genus which I have not been able to procure 

 for inspection. We see it also, though much less power- 

 fully indicated, in the Sericotrogus subcenescens from New 

 Zealand, and in certain of the Phlceophagi, as, for in- 

 stance, the European P. ceneopiceus; and it is about 

 equally traceable in the Pseudophlceophagus tenax, of the 

 Madeiran and Azorean archipelagos. Except in these 

 particular instances I have no evidence of its existence ; for 

 in the Pachy stylus dimidiatus, from Chili, as well as in 

 two Pentarthra from the same region, it is so excessively 

 faint as to be hardly even recognizable. But what I should 

 regard as far more significant, in a systematic point of 

 view, is the occasional obsoleteness., or even total absence, 

 of the scutellum, for in by far the greater number of the 

 Cossonids that organ is (in proportion to their size) largely 

 expressed. In the small subfamilies however of Notiomi- 

 metides and Dry optlior ides, as well as in 13 genera of the 

 Pentarthrides , 2 of the Onycholipides, and 10 of the true 

 Cossonides (making 30 groups in all, out of the 122), it 

 is either altogether untraceable, or else so far reduced in 

 dimensions as to be detected with difficulty ; and it will be 

 seen by a reference to my tabular synopsis that I have made 

 use of this fact in locating the particular types to which it 

 applies. 



The curious instability which is indicated amongst the 

 representatives of the present family, in the exact number 

 of the funiculus joints, is more than paralleled by the 

 occasional obliteration (whether wholly or in part) of the 

 organs of sight. The only member however of the true 

 Cossonides in which the eyes, so far as I am aware, are 

 absent, is the Lipommata calcaratum, a pilose, Phlceo- 

 phagus-l^Q Cossonid, of slightly burrowing propensities, 

 which lives about the roots of sand-plants in the island of 

 Porto Santo, of the Madeiran archipelago. But in the 

 anomalous subfamily Onycholipides, no less than three 

 genera (out of the four) namely Onycholips, Raymondio- 

 nymus, and Alaocyba are totally blind ; and the Aus- 

 tralian Halorhynchus, which (although pertaining to the 

 latter) is exactly osculant between the Onycholipides and 

 Pentarthrides, is in a similar condition. And there are 

 four other Pentarthrideous types namely Pentatemnus, 

 Pseudow.esoxenus, Amaurorrhinus, and Heteropsis, as 

 well as the single exponent of the abnormal subfamily 



