COLEOPTERA. 405 



Sisyphus, Lat. 



The Sisyphi differ from the other CopropHagi in their antennae, 

 which consist of but eight joints, and in their abdomen, which is tri- 

 angular. The four last legs are long and narrow, their thighs clavate. 

 The body is short and thick; no scutellum(l). 



CiRCELLIUM, Lat. 



The body hemispherical and convex; the abdomen almost semi- 

 circular, and the lateral edges of the thorax straight or not dilated, 

 or but slightly, in the middle. No scutellum. Five or six denta- 

 tions in the epistoma(2). 



CopROBius, Lat. 



No scutellum; the body ovoid, not arched, or but slightly so; mid- 

 dle of the lateral margins of the thorax dilated into an obtuse or 

 rounded angle, abdomen nearly square; epistoma bidentate. These 

 Insects are more particularly proper to the western continent(3). 



Those species, in which the four posterior tibise are proportionally 

 shorter, dilated, or remarkably widened at the extremity, and the 

 first joints of the tarsi are broader, form the genus Chseridium of 

 MM. Lepeletier and Serville — Encyc. Method.; — we will also unite' 

 to the Coprobii the Hyhoma of the same authors. 



Another subgenus allied to the preceding, the species of which are 

 also proper to America, that which they call ^schrotes, but which 

 had been previously published by Dalman — Ephem. Entom., 1824 

 —under another name, that of 



EuRYSTERNus, Dalm. 



Differs from the preceding subgenera in the presence of a scutel- 

 lum. The body is also an oblong oval, and plane above; the sides 

 of the thorax are obliquely and abruptly truncated. The interme- 

 diate coxae are directed longitudinally with the body, and parallel to 

 its sides. 



In all the following Coprophagi, the four posterior tibiae are al- 

 ways dilated at their extremity, and almost in the form of an elon- 

 gated triangle; the intermediaries, as in the last, terminate in two 

 stout spurs or spines; but the head or thorax, or both, in the males, 



(1) Meuchus Schmfferi, Fab.; — Sc. longipes,0\\v., and some undescribed species 

 from the Cape of Good Hope. 



(2) The Ateuch\, Bacchus, Hollandiw, Fab. 



(3) The .4. volvens, violaceus, triangularis, 6-punciatus, &c., Fab. 



