1082 COLEOPTERA 



Antenna red, club not darker; third joint much more slender 

 than second, and a little shorter than it, bat little longer than broad; 

 4-9 small, similar to one another; the two terminal joints forming 

 an abrupt, rather broad club. Thorax with uneven surface, and ex- 

 planate sides, the explanate portion divided by very large excisions 

 into three elongate slender lobes, one of which projects much 

 forwards and forms the produced very acute front angles, the two 

 others project outwards, and the hind angles form a fourth but very 

 minute prominence. Elytra not at all explanate at sides, bearing 

 numerous blunt slight tubercles. The upper surface is obscurely 

 squainulose and setulose, and there are some minute dark marks, 

 in addition to the common dark mark placed some distance behind 

 the scutellum and by which the species may be readily recognised. 



This little insect is very strange in Bitoma, owing to the deeply- 

 rugged sides of the thorax, which are like those of Tarphiomimus 

 and some of the small Ulonoti ; but the two- jointed club of the 

 antenna makes its position at present to be more correct in Bitoma, 

 to which genus it is connected, as regards the sides of the thorax, 

 by the two species next described. Broun has proposed to separate, 

 under the name of Notoulus, those forms allied to Ulonotus by the 

 explanate and indented sides of the thorax, but having, like Bitoma, 

 only a two- jointed club : as no character is mentioned by which his 

 genus can be separated from Bitoma other than the shape of the 

 thorax, and as this in the New Zealand species is too variable to 

 serve when used alone as a generic character, I do not adopt the 

 genus at present, though I do not think the species here described as 

 Bitoma, or, indeed, any of the New Zealand species, will ultimately 

 prove congeneric with the European type of the genus. 



Grey mouth. Helms, 



1928. B. auriculata, n.s. (Sharp ; Trans. Roy. Dub. Soc., 

 1886, p. 385.) Oblonga, angustula, ferruginea ; capite supra an- 

 tennas fortiter elevato ; prothorace lateribus anterius lobato-pro- 

 minulis, posterius longius denticulatis ; elytris tuberculis fasciculatis, 

 parum elevatis, seriatim dispositis. 



Long., 3fmm. 



This species is very like a small Endophlceus ; but, though there 

 is a slight enlargement of the ninth joint of the antenna, and the club 

 itself is rather slender, yet it is very evidently only two-jointed. The 

 Jiead is remarkably strongly elevated at each side over the antenna! 

 cavity, and the first joint of the antenna is concealed ; the sides of 

 the submentum are quite prominent, and there is thus formed a 

 well-marked antennal fovea adjacent to the eye ; the legs are short, 

 and there is a very slight incrassation of, and prolongation of, the 

 undersurface of the basal joint of the tarsus. The form of the 

 thorax is remarkable, the front half having the sides dilated as an 

 explanate projection, as in Tarphiomimus, while the posterior half is 

 not explanate, but merely armed with some elongate denticles or 

 serrations ; the surfaces of the head and thorax are rather closely 

 granulate, and the latter is a little uneven ; the elytra have regular 



