VI INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



plored ground. The public museums and private cabinets of Europe, 

 however rich many of them are in species, possess the examples of 

 most of those species unnamed, and often unar ranged, and are in 

 consequence of but (comparatively) little practical use in assisting 

 the student ; hence I resolved, at the suggestion of Dr. Gray, of the 

 British Museum, to seek to reduce into systematic order some one 

 of the groups that during our journey had especially attracted our 

 attention. I selected, as one of the most interesting in beauty and 

 variety of forms, as well as from being hitherto almost entirely 

 neglected (but without any apprehension of the serious difficulties 

 that such a subject would involve), a division of the HALTICID.E (a 

 subgroup of the section of PHYTOPHAGA). 



The present volume is the commencement of the work that. I thus 

 proposed to myself; it contains part of the first two divisions of that 

 group, proposed by Illiger (Mag. fur Insekt., Sechster Band, 1807), 

 and consists of a classification and descriptions not only of the species 

 of the section that are contained in the British Museum, but also of 

 those existing in the cabinets of MM. Chevrolat, Deyrolle, Dohrn, 

 and Lacordaire, as well as of Messrs. Baly, Bates, Fry, J. Gray, 

 Miers, Murray, "Waterhouse, and my own. The great kindness and 

 liberality of these gentlemen has enabled me to describe in the 

 present volume forty- two genera, consisting of 245 species. 



With regard to the geographical stations of these species, one only 

 is known from the kingdom of Chili ; 136 are found in the regions 

 of Brazil south of the Amazon (6 of these are insular, one being from 

 the Island of St. Catherine, and 5 from the Island of St. Paul) ; 65 

 are found in the basin of the River Amazon (between the Delta and 

 Peru), while the part of the continent north of the Amazon Basin 

 furnishes 27 (of which the district round Cayenne supplies 11, 

 Venezuela 6, New Granada 4, and Columbia 6). Six species are found 

 in Mexico and the south of North America, one insular species 

 (^EJdmon sericellum) being indigenous to Porto Rico. In addition to 

 these, 3 species are found in other countries of North America one in 

 Pennsylvania, and 2 in Philadelphia. Three species only are found 

 in Africa one (Eutornus Africanus) at Sierra Leone, one (Phy- 

 sonychis smaragdina) in Senegal, and a third (Lithonoma Afrwana) 

 near Tangiers; two only are found in Europe (Lithonoma cincta, 



