TOMICIDJ2. 241 



This extremely minute Aphanarthrum appears to be attached to 

 the rotten stalks of the Euphorbia canariensis, being widely though 

 sparingly diffused over the Canarian Group. I took a single specimen 

 of it in Palma, during the spring of 1858 ; and a tolerable series is 

 now before me, captured by the Messrs. Crotch in Teneriffe and Go- 

 mera during the summer of 1864. Although its elytra are quite 

 dark compared with those of the other Aphanarthra (except the 

 A. pusittum) here enumerated, nevertheless the Teneriffan examples 

 are usually a shade paler than the Gomeran (and Palman ?) ones, 

 and have their central fascia (which in the latter is almost entirely 

 suffused and obsolete) often quite appreciable, under which cir- 

 cumstances it takes much the same form as that of the A. canariense. 

 The specimens from Teneriffe have also the extreme apex of their 

 pronotum for the most part rather less evidently biplicate (or mi- 

 nutely bipartite) than is the case in those from Gomera and Palma. 



678. Aphanarthrum bicinctum. 



Aphanarthrum bicinctum, Wott., Ann. Nat. Hist. v. 105 (1860). 



, Id., Cat. Can. Col. 260 (1864). 



, Id., Append, huj. op. 4.3. 



Habitat Canarienses (Lanz., Futrt., Can., Ten.)- in Euphorbiis emor- 

 tuis hinc inde vulgatissimum. 



A Canarian Aphanarthrum which seems to put on at least three 

 slightly different phases (probably indeed more), according to the 

 island in which it is found ; but these states, although usually 

 separable in a general way, do in reality merge into each other so 

 completely that I am satisfied it would be unsafe to attempt to 

 uphold any one of them as specifically distinct from the rest. The 

 A. bicinctum, as thus received, has been observed abundantly in 

 Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Grand Canary, and Teneriffe ; but it is 

 the form from the first and second of those islands which I have 

 regarded as the type simply, however, because it was the Lanza- 

 rotan and Fuerteventuran examples which supplied the data for my 

 original diagnosis. The specimens (thus treated as typical) from 

 the two eastern islands are a little smaller than the Grand-Canarian 

 ones, and the latter (which are consequently, in that respect, inter- 

 mediate) than those from Teneriffe. Moreover the Teneriffan ones 

 are not only (on the average) somewhat larger and broader than the 

 others, but they are also just perceptibly more opake and a trifle 

 more thickly pubescent ; and their entire colour is usually darker, 

 the fasciae being often greatly suffused. Yet the corresponding 



B 



