COLEOPTERA. 39 
_tube intestinal des Insectes, Ann. du Mus. d’Hist. Nat.—has care- 
fully studied the texture of the tunics of the alimentary canal *. The 
adipose tissue is more abundant in these Heteromera than in the fol- 
lowing ones, which enable them, even when transfixed and confined 
with a pin, to live six months without food, a fact I have witnessed in 
an Akis. 
Our first division of this family, which in the Linnean system 
forms the genus TenEpnrio, is founded on the presence or absence of 
wings. 
Of those which are deprived of these organs, and in which the ely- 
tra are generally soldered, some have the palpi almost filiform, or ter- 
minated by a moderately dilated joint, and do not form a distinctly 
securiform or triangular club. They will compose a first tribe, that 
of the Prime LiaRia, so named from the genus 
Pime.ia, Fab. 
Which is the most numerous of the whole. 
Sometimes the mentum is more or less cordiform, the superior mar- 
gin either emarginated in the middle, and divided as it were into two 
short and rounded lobes, or broadly emarginated or widened. 
Here, the two last joints of the antennz, or the tenth or eleventh, 
always distinct, sometimes unite to form an ovoid or pyriform body, 
or are evidently separated from each other. The superior margin of 
the mentum is rounded and emarginated in the middle, or as if 
divided into two festoons. 
These have the anterior margin of the head almost straight or pro- 
jecting but slightly in the middle, without a profound emargination 
for the reception of the mentum, and its lateral margin simply and 
slightly dilated above the insertion of the antenne; the head does 
not seem to be sensibly narrowed behind, nor widened and truncated 
before. The thorax is not cordiform, deeply emarginated before and 
truncated posteriorly. 
From these last, we may separate those in which the anterior mar- 
gin of the head is straight, or nearly so, without any angular or den- 
tiform dilatation in the middle, in which the almost square and mode- 
rate sized labrum is entirely exposed, the thorax is transversal, and 
the abdomen extremely voluminous and inflated. 
Those, in which the body is more or less ovoid or oval, the thorax 
narrower than the abdomen even at base, generally convex, without 
acute prolongations at the posterior angles, and without a posterior 
projection to the preesternum, compose the subgenus properly called 
* What M. Dufour styles the chylific ventricle, M. de Serres calls the stomach, 
and, relative to other Insects, the duodenum. What he calls the small intestine is 
considered by the first as the cecum. According to M. Dufour, M. de Serres 
has not mentioned the crop of the Melasoma, although in Akis and Pimelia it is very 
apparent. 
