Nanophyes.~\ RIIYNCHOPHORA. 323 



rostrum, shorter and rather more distinctly punctured thorax, less 

 evident pubescence, and broader and shorter and much less acuminate 

 elytra, of which the interstices are flat ; it is difficult to compare the 

 colour, as N. lythri is so variable, but in the single specimen I have 

 taken (in the Xew Forest) there is a large triangular patch covering 

 base, and the whole of the rest of the elytra is reddish testaceous ; 

 I have not noticed this colouring in the preceding species. L. l^-lf 

 mm. 



Marshy places; by sweeping herbage; very local, and rare; according to Bedel it 

 lias been found in France in numbers on Lotus ulijinosus, and Brisout mentions it 

 as attached to Erica cinerea ; Champion mentions it as found running up the stems 

 of Carex, Ac., from the marshy ground beneath, towards evening ; Esher (in some 

 numbers, Rye and Champion); Horsell, Surrey (Power) ; B alcotn be, Surrey ; New 

 Forest (Champion, myself and others). 



CIONUS, Clairville. 



The species of Cionus are very easily distinguished by their globose 

 form and the black velvety patches on their elytra, which often, but 

 not always, take the form of small or moderate sized circular spots; the 

 thorax is extremely small in proportion to the elytra which are more 

 than twice as broad as its base ; the rostrum is rather long and more 

 or less curved ; the scutellum is conspicuous ; the prosternum is often 

 excavate before the anterior coxae and excised at apex, and all the 

 femora are armed with a more or less strong tooth ; the species known 

 are about thirty or forty in number, of which eighteen occur in Europe ; 

 representatives have also been recorded from Xorth and South Africa, 

 Teneriffe, Siberia, Persia and Tasmania. They appear to be attached 

 to Scrophulariacere, and more especially to species of Verbascum 

 (Mullein), and Scrophularia ; the larvae feed on the leaves of these 

 plants and appear to a certain extent to mine the parenchyma ; they are 

 covered with a glutinous matter which is secreted from a retractile 

 nipple placed on the upper surface of the anal segment ; the softness 

 and mobility of their integument enables them to cover their entire 

 body with this substance ; it partly serves as a protection against rain 

 or heat, but its chief use is in the formation of the cocoon in which 

 the insect undergoes its metamorphoses ; when the time arrives for the 

 change to the pupa state the larva attaches itself to a point of the leaf 

 and thickens the glutinous matter which covers it, and then contracts 

 its body so as to gain in breadth what it loses in length ; when the 

 covering has been fixed to the leaf all round and has acquired consis- 

 tency it manages to detach itself from connection with it and undergoes 

 its change to the pupa ; after six or eight days it emerges as a perfect 

 insect, and then cuts a neat spherical hole in its cocoon and so emerges. 

 (Vide Chapuis et Candeze, Catalogue des Larves des Coleopteres, 

 p. 223.) 



The sexual differences consist in various characters of the rostrum 



T 2 



