144 Mr. G. Lewis on new 



Legs red ; front coxa3 yellow, the four hinder ones black, 

 streaked with yellow on the sides j front femora black at the 

 base and beneath, middle femora with two black stripes, and 

 tibise and tarsi varied with black ; hind legs almost entirely 

 blackish above. 



Wings smoky hyaline, yellowish towards the costa, as in 

 P. palUpes^ St.-Farg., to which this species is most nearly 

 allied; but the second submarginal cell is smaller and irregu- 

 larly hexagonal, and the recurrent nervure which enters it is 

 much more distinctly curved outwards in the middle than in 

 P. pallipes. 



Collected by Herr Michaelis at Lagos, Brazil, Feb. 2, 

 1887. 



The nest and a quantity of grubs were also obtained. The 

 former much resembles that of P. tepidus, Fabr., figured by 

 Saussure (' Gu^pes Sociales,' pi. viii. fig. 1), except that the 

 pedicel is thicker. 



XVIII. — On new Species of Formicarious Histeridse, and 

 Notes on others. By George Lewis, F.L.S. 



Having at the present time a fairly complete collection of the 

 known Hetcerii and of the species in the genera which resemble 

 them, I have interspersed with the descriptions of new species 

 notes on some of the characteristics of such of the old ones 

 as have not hitherto been fully dealt with by authors. I 

 refer chiefly to the specific differences exhibited in the sternal 

 plates. The first Hetcerius known to naturalists was described 

 by Olivier in 1789 as Hister ferrugineus ; the second, piiber- 

 ulus, by Motschulsky in 1837 ; and even as late as 1868 only 

 seven species appear in the 'Munich Catalogue,' as two of the 

 nine given by Harold stand now in Satrapes and Echinodes. 

 Our list now contains thirty-three, and I propose to separate 

 twenty-four of these from the others under the generic name 

 of Sternocoehs, as the meso- and metasterna are widely and 

 deeply excavated, leaving only those in Hetcerius which 

 correspond more or less in the structure of the mesosternum 

 with Hister ferrugineus, Olivier ; and these last really agree 

 better with Eretmotus than with Sternoccelis. 



1 do this the more readily because the structure of the 

 sternal plates in the Histeridse is very important, and in 

 studying the family careful regard must be paid to it. 



