ORDER COLEOPTERA. 341 



spine at the base of the anterior tarsi, much stronger and 

 more crooked in one of the sexes. On grasses.* 



Other melyrides with crotchets of the tarsi unindentated, 

 as well as in Dasytes, to which they are much approximating, 

 and with which Olivier confounds them, are removed from 

 them by antennae shorter than the head and corslet, and the 

 third articulation of which is at least as long again as the 

 second. Their body is less elongated, of a more solid con- 

 sistence, Avith the head a little prolonged, and narrowed in 

 front, the corslet almost semi-orbicular, and truncated in 

 front. They have a certain resemblance with the coleoptera 

 of the genus Silpha of Linnaeus. Such are 



Zygia, Fab. 



The fourth articulation of the antennae and the following 

 ones, form almost an elongated knob, compressed, denticu- 

 lated like a saw, and most part of these articulations are 

 transverse. The corslet is very convex. 



Z. Oblonga, Fab. is found in Spain, and in Egypt, in the 

 interior of houses, and more especially, as M. le Comte 

 Dejean has informed me, in garrets. It appears that it is 

 also met with in France, in the department of the Eastern 

 Pyrenees. Another species has been discovered in Nubia. 



Melyris, Fab., 



Whose antennae thicken insensibly without forming a knob, 

 and whose articulations are less dilated laterally, and almost 

 isometrical. The corslet is less convex,-f- 



* See, for the other species, Fabricius. The melyris of Olivier, Nos. 6, 

 17. Panz. Ind. Entom. p. 143, Lat. Gen. Crust, et Ins. I. p, 264. Germ. 

 Insect. Spec. Nov. Brazil, supplies some tolerably large, some of which 

 constitute a particular division. 



f M. viridis. Fab. Oliv. Col. II. 21. I. 1 ; M. abdominalis. Fab. Oliv. 

 Aid. I. 7 ; Opatrum granulatum, Fab. Coqueb. lUust. icon. Insect. HI. 

 XXX. 7. 



