396 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



merit within the group was ahnost quite the reverse of that sug- 

 gested by him. 



I have now dealt with the three classifications in all but 

 their least important points, and I hope I have given no unfair 

 representation of the views held by their authors. From the 

 criticisms which I have ventured to offer as I went along it will 

 be evident that my own views on the phylogeny of the Coleoptera 

 are in more or less complete accord with those of Ganglbauer. 

 His classification, it is true, is not altogether satisfactory, 

 because it leaves us still somewhat in doubt as to the origin of 

 certain of the groups, but in the present state of our knowledge 

 it could hardly have done otherwise. We may in course of 

 time be better able to see how the Phytophaga and Lamelli- 

 cornia have been derived. If we are to attach great importance 

 to the pedicellate structure of the testes, common to the two 

 groups,* and believe that it could not have been acquired in- 

 dependently by each, we must look for the origins of both groups 

 very near one another. That they were near one another in any 

 case seems quite probable, and it is only a question with me as 

 to which was the later of the two, and which therefore should 

 come last in the classification. 



I think it possible also that the Heteromera, instead of being 

 derived directly from the Protocantharideon, may have branched 

 off at a very early date from the common stem of the Diversi- 

 cornia — that the Diversicornia and Heteromera may have gone 

 together a little in one direction, the Phytophaga and Lamelli- 

 cornia together in another, before the final differentiation into 

 the four groups took place. Of these four groups, the Diversi- 

 cornia, in their lowest forms the Malacodermata, seem to have 

 retained most of the ancestral characters ; and the Lamelli- 

 cornia, taking them as a whole, seem to be the most modified. 

 The Ehynchophora are indeed, as Kolbe maintains, another 

 highly modified group, and if there were no such group as the 

 Phytophaga existing, to which they show so close an affinity, 

 they might very well be placed after the Lamellicornia. All 

 things considered, I agree, then, as in most other points, with 

 the order in which Ganglbauer has arranged the groups, and I 

 think that his classification may well stand for the present as 

 the one best devised to express our knowledge of the phylogeny 

 of the Coleoptera. 



* Since writing the footnote on p. 169, I have ascertained from dissections 

 made by myself, and also by Mr. F. Muir, that the testes of Timarclia are as 

 described by Dr. Bordas, and of a different type from those of other Phyto- 

 phaga — a fact which is somewhat disconcerting. 



Errata. — In the last paragraph on p. 124, and the first two on 

 p. 125, for Mg read Mj^. In the last paragraph on p. 349, and the 

 last on p. 350, for Dascillidge read Dascilloidea. 



