530 Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston on the 



suffice, of itself, to exclude a manifestly erratic form like 

 Onycholips from being regarded as the type of a new 

 department of the present family, the exponents of which 

 are thus anomalously (though variously) modified. 



Apart from its totally blind condition, its 6-jointed funi- 

 culus* and quadriarticulate feet, as well as from the fact 

 of its anterior coxas being entirely and its intermediate 

 ones almost contiguous, and its apparent freedom from 

 tarsal claws, Onycholips is at once remarkable for its 

 rather globose and testaceous body, which is sparingly 

 beset with exceedingly long silken pile, and the surface of 

 which is somewhat uneven (being marked, or pitted, with 

 large but shallow varioles, or irregular punctiform impres- 

 sions) and slightly asperated, for its rostrum being short, 

 broad, depressed, and subtriangular, for its scutellum being 

 distinct, and for its antennae and legs being greatly abbre- 

 viated. Indeed, the former are of a most curious struc- 

 ture, their scape being so reduced in length as to be 

 absolutely concealed within the short and deep auriculiform 

 scrobs ; whilst its funiculus has the first two (I) articula- 

 tions very largely and subequally incrassated, with the 

 remaining four minute ; and their club is extremely solid, 

 and apically-pilose. And the latter, which are very short 

 (especially as regards their femora), are still more extra- 

 ordinary, the two front tibise being produced at their 

 outer angle into an exceedingly elongated, tectiform lobe 

 (which represents the ordinary hook) ; whilst the four 

 hinder ones are powerfully developed, and spinulose along 

 their exterior edge, and compressed at each of their angles 

 (inner and outer) into a small obtuse lobiform plate, 

 between which the feet are implanted. These latter are 

 on a pattern which is quite without precedent in any 

 Coleopterous insect with which I am acquainted : for 

 while the anterior pair are abnormally shortened, narrow, 

 filiform, and quadri-articulate (the fifth joint being appa- 

 rently lost, and the fourth, or terminal, one being sur- 

 mounted by a tuft of elongate pile as though to represent 

 the ungues), the remaining ones have their basal joint 

 abbreviated, the two following produced into a divaricating 

 spiniform lobe at each of their angles, and the fourth, as I 

 believe, minute and completely soldered to, or merged into, 

 the fifth (which, like those which precede it, is apically- 



* Lacordaire, in his ' Genera' (vide vii. 347), has inadvertently recorded 

 Onycholips as possessing a 7 -jointed funiculus. 



