THE ENTOMOLOGIST 



Vol. XLIV.] APEIL, 1911. [No. 575 



ON SOME RECENT ATTEMPTS TO CLASSIFY THE 

 COLEOPTERA IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEIR 

 PHYLOGENY. 



By C. J. Gahan. M.A. 



(Published by Permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



The arrangement of the Coleoptera in the last edition of 

 Reitter's ' Catalogue ' of the European species is one which 

 appeared to be quite new and strange to many of our students 

 of the British fauna. 



That arrangement seems, however, to have been based very 

 largely upon the classification of the Coleoptera proposed by 

 Ganglbauer in 1903, which itself is only one of three or four diffe- 

 rent classifications published since the appearance of Sharp's in the 

 second volume on ' Insects ' in the Cambridge Natural History. 



The classification proposed by Dr. Sharp, in which the 

 families of Coleoptera are grouped together in sis series, 

 beginning with one highly specialized group, the Lamellicornia, 

 and ending with another as highly, or perhaps even more highly, 

 specialized group, the Rhynchophora, was evidently not framed 

 to accord with any particular views in regard to the phylogeny 

 of the groups. 



In this respect it differs from those more recent classifications, 

 in which the aim has been to arrive at correct views as to the origin 

 and different lines of descent of the various groups and families, 

 and to give expression to those views in the classification. 



As these attempts to classify the beetles in accordance with 

 their phylogeny seem to be still not very generally known to 

 British students, it is proposed here to give some account of them. 



No serious attempt to establish a general classification of the 

 Coleoptera, based upon phylogeny, seems to have been made 

 until Professor Lameere undertook the task, whose first results 

 were published in his " Notes pour la Classification des Coleo- 

 pteres."* This paper, which received notice in the 'Entomo- 

 logist ' at the time, is remarkable, not so much for the novelty of 

 the classification proposed as for the many valuable hints and 

 suggestions it contained, and the great stimulus it appears to 

 *Ann. See. Ent. Belg. xliv. p. 355 (1900). 



ENTOM. — APRIL, 1911. K 



