Mr. T. V. Wollaston on the Coleoptera of St. Helena. 309 



Fam. 6. Dermestidae. 



Genus 12. Dermestes. 



Linnjeus, Syst. Nat. ii. 561 (1767). 



13. Dermestes cadaverinus^. 



Dcnuestes cadnverinus, Fab., Syst. Eut. 55 (1775). 



, Oliv., Ent. ii. 9. 3 (1790). 



(Io>,icsficH><, ((^ebl.) Germ., Ins. Spec. Nov. 85. 143 (1824). 



cndavcrinus, Woll., Ann. Nat. Hist. vii. 301 (1801). 



This widely spread Dermestes liavinp; originally been de- 

 scribed by Fabricius (in 1775) from a St.-Hclena example, in 

 the collection of iSir Joseph Banks, it seems scarcely right to 

 omit it from the present memoir, even though 1 do not myself 

 ha])j)en to have seen a specimen of it from that island. Being 

 peculiarly liable to transmission, in various articles of mer- 

 chandise and commerce, throughout the civilized world, it has 

 been made to acquire a very extensive geographical range, — 

 being recorded not only in Europe, but even from South 

 America, Mexico, Otaheite, the East Indies, Siberia, Arabia, 

 &c. ; antl it was obtained abundantly, by the late Mr. Bewicke, 

 at Ascension. Speaking of it, in 1861, in a short paper on 

 Ascension Coleoptera, I remarked that " it belongs to the se- 

 cond of Erichson's sections, in which tlie third and fourth 

 abdominal segments of the males (instead of the fourth alone) 

 are furnished beneath with a little circular fossefte armed with 

 a cone (or convergent fasciculus) of powerful bristles. In 

 specific details, it may be known from its several allies by its 

 (black) upper sm*face being uniformly and rather densely 

 clothed with a coarse yellowish-cinereous pile, by its rather 

 elongate and slightly narrow outline, and by its abdominal 

 under segments havnig, each of them, two roundish j)atchc3 

 of darker pile in their centre (gradually dtminishinq and ap- 

 proximating in each successive segment towards the apex), 

 and a sublunate one at either lateral edge." 



14. Dermestes vulpinus*. 



Dermestes vulpinus, Fab., Spec. lus. i. 64 (1781). 



, Woll, Col. Atl. 159 (1805). 



, Id., Col. IIcsp. 79 (1807). 



An examj)le of this almost cosmopolitan Dermestes (which 

 is so well characterized by the very minute spinule with whicli 

 the extreme apex of each of its elytra is furnished) was taken 

 by Mr. Melliss at St. Helena ; but the species, which (like 

 the D. cadaverinus) is so eminently liable to accidental dis- 

 semination along \\'ith various articles of commerce and mer- 



