CHAPTER III. 



ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE LINN.EAN 

 SCARAB^I. 



1 HE preceding chapter may be considered as containing 

 a brief but pretty accurate outline of our knowledge with 

 respect to the classification of this very important branch 

 of entomology. M. Dumeril has indeed distributed the 

 Scarabai of Linnaeus into Petaloceri and Prioceri, the 

 first of which names I have for convenience adopted, 

 though neither of them express any thing but the genera 

 Scarabceus and Lucanus as they exist in the later edi- 

 tions of the Systema Naturce. The term Prioceri seems 

 even to be so far objectionable, that serrated antennas by 

 no means, as will be shown, constitute the precise natural 

 character of the division'^. There are also some other 

 changes or rather reforms (for it seems hard to call that 

 an innovation which has the right of priority to support it) 

 which appear absolutely necessary ; and the explanation 

 of this truth will form the principal subject of the present 

 chapter. 



ScarahcBus^ appears to have been originally the name 



* An additional reason for not adopting this word is, that Mr. Kirby has 

 lately given the name of Priocera to a new genus m the family of CLeridte. 



'' The origin of the word Scarabteus is not very clear; at least its derl- 

 ▼ation from e-xasTTfti, as given by Fabricius and Olivier, seems quite irrecon- 

 cileable with the most common rules of etymology. To me it appears 

 difficult to obtain the word at all from the Greek; and when we consider 

 that it never occurs but in the Latin authors, there is little reason to doubt 

 its being of Etruscan origin. If however it be a point of necessity that 



