166 Mr. G. Lewis on the Pyrochroidse of Japan. 



Japan. America. 



Ischalia 1 1 



Pyrochroa 6 2 



ScMzotus 3 1 



Dendroides 2 4 



The other known members of the family are : from Europe 

 six, Northern Asia and China four, Java one, Borneo one, 

 and Australia one. 



The Javan species, Pyrochroa longa, Pertj, as the name im- 

 plies, has a very different outline from any of the others, and 

 in the British Museum there are two undescribed species, also 

 from Java, which resemble it. But the table given above 

 must be taken with qualification or it will lead, if it lead to 

 any conclusion at all, to speculation of a poor sort. It merely 

 gives the divisions of the family found in Japan and America 

 according to the present generic arrangements, and all such 

 assortments are necessarily more or less provisional and liable 

 to change with an increase of knowledge. There is hardly a 

 family perhaps in the Coleoptera of which so little is known 

 as the Pyrochroidse. The Japanese species of Dendr aides are 

 in several repects different from those known from America ; 

 and although I consider it will not at any time be desirable 

 to establish a genus to hold them, their discovery materially 

 enlarges the scope of Dendroides. And when the compara- 

 tive value of the table is examined, inquiries must also be 

 undertaken as to the extent of the researches yet made in 

 Japan and America. Are they or are they not relatively 

 complete ? The species in Japan are local, and the inference 

 therefore is that more discoveries may be made which may 

 modify any views put forth, and the American continent is 

 so vast that it seems safe to predict the same thing of it, 



I am led into making these observations because Herr H. 

 J. Kolbe, of Berlin, has lately published, in the ' Archiv fiir 

 Naturgeschichte,' 1886, p. 142, eleven well-arranged tables 

 showing the distribution of some Korean Coleoptera. The 

 tables show great care in their elaboration, but they are based 

 on such insufficient material that it is impossible to assign to 

 them any value. Only 142 species are enumerated, and some 

 of these are not, in my opinion, characteristic of the Eastern 

 fauna. I no not refer especially to those that are usually 

 called cosmopolitan insects, such as Dermestes, Necrohia, Gib- 

 bium, certain Aphodiiy &c., but to others which have a very 

 wide distribution and are species familiar to most coleopterists. 

 The publication of geographical statistics for the Coleoptera 

 of China, Korea, and Japan is premature now, and will, I 

 think, remain so until the important region lying between 



