Mr. T. V. Wollaston on new Canarian Coleoptera. 437 
increment of the embryo, which becomes surrounded by an 
albuminous mass that pushes upward the amniotic body, and 
remains persistent on it like a calyptriform cap, is quite analo- 
gous to the growth described by Miquel in Cycadacee, and very 
different from that of Gnetum. It is remarked by Brown that 
each suspending thread appears formed of about four simple 
tubes connected together but slightly, for he found them easily 
separable from one another without laceration of their surfaces ; 
and this fact gives additional force to the conclusion before 
mentioned regarding the nature and origin of the suspensor. 
Still further evidence is given by Schleiden, who traced the en- 
trance of pollen-tubes into the areolar cavities before described, 
and into the embryo-sacs, with which they remained permanently 
connected. The growth and development of these several em- 
bryo-sacs in each ovule, and their attachment to suspending 
threads in Pinus, Thuja, and Taxus, are minutely described and 
figured in the interesting researches of Mirbel and Spach*, 
published about the same time, and confirming all the observa- 
tions of Brown: they describe also each suspending thread as 
being formed of five or six boyaux or simple tubes agglutinated 
together, each being hollow and filled with granular fluid or 
such fovillz as are usually found in the boyaux of pollen. 
[To be continued. | 
XLVI.—Brief Diagnostic Characters of new Canarian Coleoptera. 
By T. Vernon Wottasrton, M.A., F.L.S. 
Tue following short diagnoses of Canarian Coleoptera are merely 
provisional, and are intended to secure a few of the more interest- 
ing species, the full details of which (structural and geographical) 
will be given in the general Catalogue which I am now preparing 
of the Coleoptera of that archipelago. But as the latter is a work 
of considerable time and labour, and as a large portion of my 
material has already been dispersed in European collections, it is 
almost too much to expect that a certain percentage of the new 
forms (the descriptions of which .have long been completed) 
would not be anticipated were I to delay the publication of them 
until my whole manuscript is ready for the press; under these 
circumstances, therefore, I feel that the subjoined notices, how- 
ever brief, will serve my purpose in preventing, thus far at least, 
a too violent intrusion into my Atlantic province. 
* Ann. Sc. Nat. 2 sér. xix. pl. 8, 9, 10, 11. 
_ Ann. & Mag. N. Hist, Ser. 3. Vol, ix. 31 
