Coleopterous Genus Oniticellus. 179 



original types o£ tlie species possessed by the authors of 

 works dealing with the European Coleoptera. The recently 

 published edition of Heyden, Reitter, and Weise's Catalogue 

 enumerates five species of Oniticellus, viz., 0. festivus, Steven, 

 pallipes, Fabr., pallens, Oliv., speciosus, Costa, and fulvus, 

 Goeze. 



Mr. C. O. Waterhouse, in the Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 

 (7) ii. 1898, p. 75, expressed doubt as to the correct identi- 

 fication of 0. pallipes, Fabr., and Mulsant had long before 

 (Col(^opt. de France, Lamell. 1842, p. 98) expressed a doul)t 

 whether the European species so long known as 0. pallipes 

 was correctly so called, but the question has never advanced 

 beyond the stage of conjecture. A careful comparison estab- 

 lishes the entire distinctness of tiie two forms. 0. pallipes 

 was described from a specimen from Coromandel now in tiie 

 Britisii Museum and is a species which I have seen from all 

 parts of India, but from nowhere outside that area. The 

 European species has a general resemblance to it, but is 

 decidedly larger, much more shining, and more strongly and 

 closely punctured upon the prothorax. Its range is from 

 Arabia, Persia, and Turkestan, by the northern shore of the 

 Mediterranean to Italy and the south of France. It has 

 many times been carefully described, but as no existing name 

 is available, I propose to call it 



Oniticellus nitidicollis, sp. n. 



For my type I have selected a specimen from Sardinia in the 

 British Museum. 



The type specimen of 0. pallipes, Fabr., is a male of a 

 form of which I have seen only two other examples, one 

 from Karachi and the other from Madura. In this form the 

 three carinse upon the head are less strong than in the 

 ordinary form, the external one is at the extreme margin of 

 the clypeus, and the innermost one is gently curved and not 

 angulated. The specimens were taken in the same localities 

 as males of the common form and are exactly like the latter 

 in all other respects, so that I consider them to represent 

 only a sexual aberration. In a later description in the Syst. 

 Eleuth. p. G3, Fabricius has added, as male characters, a 

 diagnosis of the horned form, which is really the female, an 

 error which has been repeatedly made since. 



0. speciosus, Costa, is described by its author as a rare 

 Calabriau species. In the European Catalogue O. tiasicornis, 

 Ivciche, is given as a synonym of it, but although 1 have seen 

 no European specimens it is evident from the figure and 

 description that it is not that species, but O. intcnnedius, 



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