388 
insecta. 
of this division by the mode of dilitation peculiar to the two anterior 
tarsi of the males ; the two first joints, of which the radical is the 
largest, are alone dilated ; the two following ones are small and 
equal. Their body is usually more oblong than that of an Amara, 
besides which they appear to inhabit, exclusively, the coast or bor- 
ders of salt-water ponds *. 
It is only by an analogous character that we can distinguish from 
the last the 
Tetragonoderus, Dej. 
Anterior tarsi of the males less dilated, in proportion, than in the 
following ones, their first joints being more narrow, elongated, and 
rather in the form of a reversed cone than cordiform. These Insects 
are peculiar to South America f . 
Feronia, Lat. 
Three first joints of the anterior tarsi of the males strongly dilated, 
in the form of a reversed heart ; second and third rather transversal 
than longitudinal. 
This subgenus will include the numerous generic sections given in 
the Catalogue, &c. of Count Dejean, such as Amara, Pcecilus, Argutor, 
Omaseus, Platysma, Pterosticlms, Abax, Steropus, Perciis, Molops, Co- 
phosus. This learned entomologist has since — Species III — per- 
ceived the impossibility of distinguishing them, the first excepted, 
which he still retains ; the others he unites in one great generic 
section which he calls, with me, Feronia. But even as regards the 
Amarse themselves, I have vainly sought for characters in the anten- 
nae and parts of the mouth, which might clearly distinguish them 
from the other genera. The one drawn from the tooth of the middle 
of the emargination of the mentum, to say nothing of the slight 
degree of importance attached to it, is very equivocal ; this tooth in 
all these Carabici appears to me to be emarginated at the extremity, 
though somewhat more deeply or distinctly in some than in others. 
The antennae of several are slightly granose, or composed of joints 
comparatively shorter, and rounded at the summit ; but the limits of 
this distinction cannot be rigorously defined. I say the same of the 
concavity of the anterior margin of the labrum and of the form of 
the thorax. 
The Feronise may form three divisions : 
1. Those species, generally furnished with wings, in which the 
more or less oval body is slightly convex or arcuated above, with 
more fiiform antennae, the head proportionably narrower, and the 
mandibles somewhat less salient. In their habits these species ap- 
proach the Zabri and Harpali. Such are the AmaraeJ , whose thorax 
* See the Catalogue of Dejean. Germar in the Fauna Insectorum Europee has 
figured two species : Pogonus halophilus, X, i ; Harpalus luridipennis, VIII, 2, allied 
to the Pogonus pallidipennis of the first. 
•y Harpalus circumfvsus, Germ. Insect. Spec. Nov. I, 26 ? 
X Shorter species, whose thorax widens from before posteriorly, constitute the 
genus Lcirvs of some authors. The Scolyius flexuosus, Fab., seems referable to this 
division, hut according to Count Dejean the four anterior tarsi are dilated : it ap- 
