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Notes on some South Australian Trogid^e, 

 and a New Species of Trox. 



By Mr. J. G. O. Teppee, P.L.S. 

 [Read July 6, 1886.] 



The Trogidce are a family of Coleoptera widely distributed, 

 out are not attractive either for colour or habits. They are 

 usually of a dull black, brownish, or grey, live on dry dung, 

 skin, hoofs, or under putrid dead animals, but do not trouble 

 man. In form they are oval, the back arched semi-cylindri- 

 cally, and the elytra not only cover the whole body, but extend, 

 in many species, in a fairly wide margin under the flat abdo- 

 men. In this case they are usually joined in the middle, the 

 wings being absent. Whenever disturbed these beetles simu- 

 late death by drawing the legs tightly under the body, the head 

 in a cavity under the prothorax, and the short antennae (with 

 three lamellae) into a depression of the tibia of the front legs. 

 ~No amount of torturing seems capable of startling them into 

 motion. Central Australia, to the west coast, appears to pro- 

 duce the largest of the genus Trox, viz., Trox (JPIioberus, 

 McLeay) gigas, Har. (the species was kindly identified by the 

 Hon. W. McLeay), of which two specimens are in the Museum, 

 marked " Port Wakefield" and " Ardrossan" respectively. It 

 is nearly an inch in length, and half as wide, dull black, with 

 three rows of twelve or thirteen shining black conical tubercles 

 on each elytron, generally arranged two, three, seven, or two, 

 four, six, the four near the posterior extremity being much 

 more prominent than the others, especially the medial two. 



More than a year ago a gentleman from the neighbourhood 

 of Eucla left some fifteen or sixteen specimens of similar 

 beetles at the Museum, stating that they were obtained in the 

 arid country one hundred miles north of that place. They are 

 known there under the name of " Musk Beetles," as they emit 

 a most powerful musk-like odour, which even now is still very 

 strong. Some specimens were sent to the Hon. W. McLeay, 

 in Sydney, who pronounced them as a new species. It differs 

 from Trox gigas, though of the same size, or even larger, by a 

 different serration of the tibiae of the forelegs ; the claws 

 smaller and less spreading, and the form, position, and number 

 of tubercles upon the elytra. Each of the latter bears fifteen 

 to seventeen low oblong tubercles, nearly alike in height, in 



