412 Mr. T. V. WoUaston on the Coleoptera of St. Helena. 



(Subfam. Rhynchophoeides.) 



Genus 30. Sitophilus. 

 Schonherr, Gen. et Spec. Cure. iv. 967 (1838). 



46. Sitophilus or^/zce*. 



Curciilio ori/zce, Linn., Cent. Ins. 12 (1763). 

 Sitophilus oryzce, WoU., Col. Atl. 265 (1865). 

 , Id., Col. Hesp. 125 (1867). 



This almost cosmopolitan spotted Curculionid has apparently 

 established itself at St. Helena (judging from examples col- 

 lected by Mr. Melliss), just as it has in the Azorean, Ma- 

 deiran, Canarian, and Cape- Verde archipelagos ; but, being 

 eminently liable to distribution, through the medium of com- 

 merce, over more or less of the civilized world, its presence is 

 totally without significance in the fauna of any country. 



(Subfam. Synaptonychides.) 



Genus 31. Nesiotes. 



Wollaston, Journ. of Ent. i. 211 (1861). 



The two singular little Curculionids described below, for 

 the reception of the former of which the present genus was 

 established by myself in 1861, are so remarkable that I was 

 totally unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion as to 

 their precise affinities ; but the invaluable and more recent 

 work of Lacordaire has given a position to the group which 

 certainly I had little anticipated, but which tallies well with 

 the various details of its structure. He regards it as related 

 to the European Trachodes, and still more so to Echinosoma 

 of Madeira, in the latter of which the funiculus is likewise only 

 5-articulate ; and he consequently erects these three genera, 

 together with Synaptonyx from Australia, into a little sub- 

 family (under the title of Synaptonychides) of his sixteenth 

 tribe " Tanyrhynchides.''^ This arrangement brings it into 

 juxtaposition with one of the most anomalous and endemic of 

 the Madeiran weevils, the Echinosoma porcellus ; and it sup- 

 plies another instance of that curious analogy by which so 

 many of the most extravagant forms of these widely scattered 

 Atlantic islands are mysteriously bound together. 



Speculating on the position of Nesiotes in a natural system, 

 I wrote, in 1861, as follows : — " The remarkable little insect 

 for which I have been compelled to erect the present genus 

 has, at first sight, so much the appearance of a small Acalles, 

 that (before critically overhauling it) I had placed it aside as 

 a member of that group. On closer examination, however, its 



