Mr. H. W. Bates’s Notes on Longicorn Coleoptera. 143 
licides, and Heébestolides of Lacordaire as foreign to the 
Saperda type. ‘This seems to be the arrangement most in 
accordance with nature and with our present knowledge of 
this difficult and numerous group of Longicorns,—the division 
into tribes with simple and tribes with toothed claws break- 
ing down completely in the genus G'lenea (belonging to the 
true Saperde), of which we now know so many species (GJ. 
lepida, cinerea, amboynica, &c.) possessing toothed claws in 
the male, and the three ‘‘ groupes”’ above mentioned, in spite 
of their toothed claws, receding completely from the Saperda 
type in many other points of structure. Lacordaire’s elabo- 
rate classification of the Longicornia, in fact, fails here, as it 
does elsewhere, from his too close adherence to technical 
system, by which he unconsciously sacrificed natural affinity 
in striving to secure absolute definitions. 
The Amphionychides and A‘rénicides are closely allied to 
the Phytceciides of the Old World, having, like the typical 
species of that group, tarsal claws with very few exceptions 
bifid, ¢.e. their basal tooth pointed and as long or nearly as 
long as the stem of the claw. Some of the /Mrénicides 
approach the Phytecie so closely that they are scarcely to be 
distinguished from them, having a similar structure of pro- 
sternum and similar unretracted head and notched middle 
tibie ; but the gradation is so insensible between these and 
the rest, in which the middle tibie are simple and the pro- 
sternum contracted, with the head retracted * or resting in 
its lower part on the strongly exserted anterior haunches, 
that we are compelled, in spite of systematic reasons, to 
keep the whole of the forms together. In the Amphiony- 
chides there are no disparate elements ; it may be said, indeed, 
that here the tropical American type of Phytecia reaches its 
highest development, receding entirely from the Old- World 
type. ‘The head is in all strongly retracted, the tibie simple, 
the antenne, the shape, and clothing of the body different 
from the Phytecie, and the species branching out into a 
variety of beautiful and eccentric forms unlike those of any 
other Saperdine. In nearly all of them the elytra have a 
distinct raised rib or carina, separating the dorsal surface 
from the sides or epipleure, which latter are usually of great 
elevation. This is also a distinctive feature in Gleneides, the 
tropical division of the Old-World Saperde; and the two 
* Lacordaire used the term “ retractile” for this peculiar relation of 
head to prosternum; but the term is objectionable from its ambiguity, 
its obvious meaning being the power of withdrawal of the head within 
the thorax. I have myself used the word with this signification in the 
‘ Biologia Centrali-Americana, Coleoptera, vol. v. 
