454 ABNORMAL COLEOPTERA. \Strepsiptera or Stylopidce. 



campodeiform and active, certainly seem to show that they are some- 

 what closely allied to Meloe ; the characters of the groups will be found 

 fully discussed in Westwood's Classification, Vol. II. pp. 287, &c., with 

 figures of the species and larva) and various parts of their bodies ; the 

 student of the group is also referred to Kirby's Monographia Apum 

 Anglise, vol. ii. p. Ill, Curtis's Strepsiptera (Brit. Ent. Plates, 22G, 

 385 and 433), and Leconte and Horn's Classification of the Coleoptera 

 of North America, pp. 425, 426 ; the following are the chief charac- 

 teristics of the males, but there is considerable doubt as to the true rela- 

 tions of various parts, more especially as regards the mouth organs and 

 the thoracic segments ; the body is long and narrow, its great extent 

 being occupied by a very large metathorax ; the general character of the 

 body, as remarked by Westwood, indicates great weakness, and we 

 accordingly find that the insects live but a very short time in the imago 

 state ; the head and thorax are of a velvety texture ; the moiith organs 

 are very abnormal, a character probably due to the fact that the insects in 

 the perfect state, in all probability, take no food, or very little, during 

 the very short time they live, and simply continue the species ; it is 

 doubtful, in fact, if there is any true oral aperture ; apparently man- 

 dibles and one pair of palpi are present, and Savigny, Kirby, Leconte and 

 Horn and others state this as a fact ; Curtis, however, regards these so- 

 called " mandibles " as maxillse, and says " Labrutn and mandibles want- 

 ing 1 " Westwood regards the mouth organs as analogous to those of 

 certain Lepidoptera, and after remarking that Newman considers the 

 order as not sufficiently separated from the Diptera, proceeds as follows : 

 " I cannot, however, find the least analogy between the oral organiza- 

 tion of the Strepsiptera and the tubularly developed elbowed mouth of 

 the Diptera, the labrum of which is greatly elongated ; whereas, on the 

 contrary, there seems to me much greater resemblance, in this respect, 

 between the Strepsiptera and Lepidoptera, the labrum in both being 

 soldered flatly to the head, the acute mandibles, as they have been 

 termed in Stylops, being exactly represented in some of the Linna?an 

 Bombyces, by the short rudimental maxilla?, and the large articulated 

 appendages being much more analogous to the labial palpi of the 

 Lepidoptera, than to the maxillary palpi of the Diptera ; " the head is 

 large and transverse, prolonged at the sides into a stout peduncle at the 

 end of which are situated the eyes, which are large and prominent and 

 strongly granulate, the lenses being large and comparatively few in num- 

 ber ; the antennae are inserted on the front, at the base of the lateral 

 processes of the head, and vary in the different genera ; the prothorax is 

 very short, consisting of a simple ring or collar, to which the forelegs 

 are attached on the underside ; the mesothorax is scarcely larger and 

 bears on each side a slender coriaceous club-shaped appendage, with the 

 inner margin membranous ; these appendages have given rise to much 

 controversy, but apparently are aborted representatives of the elytra ; 

 the metathorax is very large, greater in bulk than the rest of the body 



