522 Mr* T. Vernon Wollaston on the 



24. MICROTKIBUS (nov. gen.). The very remarkable 

 little Cossonid for which the present genus has been 

 established is from the collection of Mr. Pascoe, and was 

 captured by my nephew, Captain F. W. Hutton, in the 

 Waikato district of North Island in New Zealand ; and 

 it is peculiarly interesting as adding another well-defined 

 type to the escutellate section of the Pentarthrides in which 

 the eyes are nevertheless fully developed. In its fusiform 

 outline, dark-piceous hue, slightly shining surface, and 

 rather shortened, subconcave metasternum, it is in entire 

 accordance with most of the immediately-allied genera ; 

 but it is conspicuous for its rostrum being rather narrow, 

 elongated, and parallel, for its eyes (although small) being 

 prominent and less wide apart from each other than is 

 usual, for its prothorax being oval, regularly rounded at 

 the sides, and largely developed, and for the second joint 

 of its exceedingly lax funiculus being very appreciably 

 lengthened, and the third one of its feet much expanded 

 and deeply bilobed. But one of its most significant 

 features "consists in the fact that, whilst the rest of its 

 body is completely bald, the base of its elytra and the 

 extreme hinder margin of its prothorax are studded, in 

 unrubbed specimens, with a few very fine, elongated hairs, 

 thus feebly shadowing-forth what is so strongly ex- 

 pressed in the nearly-blind Pentatemni (of the Atlantic 

 archipelagos), and still more so in Halorhynchus (from 

 western Australia), the anomalous Onyclwlips (of the 

 Canarian group), and the Madeiran genus Lipommata, 

 the last three of which are totally devoid of sight. 

 Whether however it at all indicates (as I am rather 

 inclined to suspect) a sand-infesting mode of life, as it 

 clearly does in the groups to which allusion has just 

 been made, I have no positive information. The exact 

 position of Microtribus, amongst the various forms which 

 up to the present time have been made known, appears to 

 be between Micro xylobius, from St. Helena, and Mesoxe- 

 nomorphus from southern Africa. 



It has given me great pleasure to name the type of this 

 interesting genus after Captain Hutton, to whose inde- 

 fatigable researches we are gradually becoming indebted 

 for a more complete knowledge of the New Zealand fauna 

 than has hitherto been brought to light. 



25. MESOXENOMOEPHUS (nov. gen.). The three ex- 

 amples for the reception of which I have been compelled 



