524 Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston on the 



this genus does not call attention to a single structural 

 peculiarity beyond the fact that its fimiculus is composed 

 of but five joints, I have nevertheless, no hesitation in 

 identifying it with my Mesoxenus (from the Madeiran and 

 Canarian archipelagos), seeing that his specific description 

 of the type, namely the A. Bonnairii (= A. narbonnensis, 

 Bris.), from Corsica and the south of France, seems to 

 accord so well with an insect now before me, from Corfu, 

 which is unquestionably a Mesoxenus, as to leave little 

 doubt in my mind that it is even the actual species referred 

 to by Fairmaire. This particular example has been com- 

 municated by Mr. Janson ; and it is so closely allied to 

 the Mesoxenus Bewickianus, from Madeira, that I had at 

 first sight imagined it must be identical with it. A more 

 critical inspection however has convinced me that the two 

 are specifically distinct, though it is impossible to have the 

 slightest hesitation in assigning them to at all events the 

 same group ; and I do not think, therefore, this being the 

 case, that Mesoxenus should be kept apart from Amau- 

 rorrhinus. Nevertheless I ought perhaps to mention that 

 Fairmaire makes no allusion whatever to the obsoleteness 

 of its eyes, which is the most important feature in the 

 insects now before me ; and that he likewise speaks of the 

 antennas as " in medio rostri insertas," whereas those organs 

 are implanted considerably before the middle in the only 

 three representatives of my genus Mesoxenus which I have 

 hitherto examined. Still, the manifest looseness, and 

 brevity, of his diagnosis is sufficient to account for these 

 omissions; and it is my belief, as just stated, that the 

 genera in question are identical.* 



Regarding therefore the Amaurorrhini and Mesoxeni 

 as coincident, I may add that the members of this genus 

 have the bald, rufo-castaneous, and slightly shining surface 

 of Pentarthrum ; nevertheless their obsolete eyes and 

 scutellum, and abbreviated metasternum, throw them into 

 a totally different section of the present subfamily. They 



* In size, colour, outline and sculpture, the species from Corfu (which I 

 believe to be the A. Bonnairii of Fairmaire) almost exactly resembles the 

 Madeiran A. Heivickianus, from which it merely differs in its prothorax 

 being a little less widened (or rounded-outwards) behind the middle, in its 

 rostrum being just appreciably slenderer and less expanded in front of the 

 antennae (which are themselves not quite so thick), in its second funiculus- 

 joint being perhaps a trifle more elongate (though not so much so as in the 

 A. Monizianus), in its club being somewhat less developed, and in its 

 metasternum and first abdominal segment being more convex (or hardly 

 at all scooped-out, or concave). 



