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



Genus 28. Microxylobius. 

 Chevi-olat, Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 98 (1836). 



The excessive importance at St. Helena (where it is mani- 

 festly aboriginal, and to which it seems to be peculiar) of the 

 little Curculionideous genus Microxylohius induces me to enter 

 more fully into its details, in this memoir, than I sliould other- 

 wise have thought it necessary to do ; and therefore, in addi- 

 tion to the four new species enunciated below, I have given 

 emended diagnoses of the five which were first captured by 

 the late Mr. Bewicke in 1860, and published by myself during 

 the following year, in the ' Transactions of the Entomological 

 Society of London.' By this method I am enabled to form a 

 monograph of the genus, as known up to the present date, — 

 tlie M. Westwoodii, for the reception of which the group was 

 originally proposed by M. Chevrolat in 1834, being the only 

 representative of which I have not been able to obtain a sight, 

 and concerning the exact sjpecific features of which I am con- 

 sequently ignorant. Indeed it is much to be regretted that 

 Chevrolat's descripiion, both of the genus and species, is not 

 more minute ; for had it not been for Professor Westwood's 

 admirable figure, it would have been next to impossible to 

 gain any definite idea from either the one or the other. 



As regards the structure and atfinities of Microxylohius^ the 

 few following remarks, which I appended to my generic dia- 

 gnosis in 1861, will not be considered out of place : — " After 

 a careful consideration of the five insects described below, all 

 of which were taken at St. Helena by Mr. Bewicke (amongst 

 native vegetation on the extreme summit of the island), I have 

 come to the conclusion, in spite of their great variety of out- 

 line and the anomalous character possessed by two of them of 

 a large acute spine towards the base of the tipjjer (!) edge of 

 their femora, that they are nevertheless members of a single 

 group ; and I am the more convinced of this, since in many 

 well-known Rhynchophorous genera (such as Ceuthorhynchus 

 and Coeliodes) we have exponents with toothed thighs (though 

 toothed in the usual manner, it is true — i. e. on the under 

 side, not on the upper), and others with simple ones. For 

 when we take into account their peculiar feature of a five- 

 jointed funiculus, as well as their more or less glabrous * 



* Although true in the majority of the species, the character " corpore 

 glabro " will not rigidly apply, I now find, to the entire genus ; for in the 

 M. vestitus (which may possihhj prove to be conspecific with the M. West- 

 woodii of Chevrolat) the body is sparingly sericeous, whilst even in the 

 M. lacertosus there are indications of very short and minute hairs an-anged 

 down the interstices of the elvtra. 



