1921] Wheeler: Some Social Beetles 95 



As understood by Coleopterists the family Cucujidse belongs to 

 the huge and very inadequately analyzed Clavicorn complex of 

 families, but its characters are so striking that they have arrested 

 the attention of some of the specialists. Thus Leconte and Horn 

 (1883) long ago remarked : "This family is evidently an antique 

 and synthetic type, which exhibits alliances with both Hetero- 

 mera and Rhynchophora more than any other Clavicorn fam- 

 ily." And Handlirsch (1908) says: "The family Cucujidse, 

 which Ganglbaur places in the midst of typically Clavicorn 

 forms, exhibits many primitive characters and at the same time 

 high specialization. I do not believe that their antennae can be 

 derived from those of the Clavicorn type, although the Cucujids 

 agree with this group in the number of their Malpighian tubules 

 (six) . Perhaps the Cucujids branched off very near the base 

 from the Cantharid stem, but possibly, and I regard this as 

 more probable, they form an independent series." In his phyle- 

 tic tree (opposite p. 1278), Handlirsch therefore depicts the 

 family as arising from the Protopolyphaga as far back as the 

 beginning of the Coenozoic. Several species of Silvanus and one 

 of Passandra are, in fact, known from the Baltic Amber (Lower 

 Oligocene Tertiary), and Wickham (1920) cites Laemophloeus 

 vestitus Scudder from the Green River Eocene and three species 

 of Lithocoryne and a Pediacus from the Miocene of Florissant. 

 That the family must be an old one is indicated also by the 

 fact that New Zealand possesses some 20 indigenous species of 

 Cucujidse, distributed over 12 genera, mostly peculiar to the 

 islands, which are said to have been separated from Australia 

 during the Jurassic. 



Kolbe (1910) is also of the opinion that the Cucujids are a 

 primitive group. He says : "The very lowly organized Cucu- 

 jids are not only in part characterized by a prothorax of very 

 primitive structure (as in the Adephaga) but primitively in- 

 serted (inframarginal) and primitively constructed (filiform or 

 moniliform) antennse." Leng (1920) places the Cucujids in the 

 lower portion of the series of Clavicorn families, near the Rhizo- 

 phagidse and Erotylidse. In a brief study of the larvae of Cucu- 

 jids, de Peyerimhoff (1902-'03) calls attention to their great 

 diversity and their resemblance on the one hand to the larvse of 

 Cryptophagus among the Clavicorns and on the other to Pyro- 



