Bates. — On the Longicom Coleoptera of New Zealand. 315 



Art. XL VI. — On the Longicom Coleoptera of New Zealand. 



By H. W. Bates, F.L.S. 



[From (lie Ann. and Mag. Nat Hist, July and August, 1874.] 



The number of new genera and species of Longicom Coleoptera described 

 in the following pages, chiefly obtained, without their devoting especial atten- 

 tion to the family, by two gentlemen (Mr. Lawson and Mr. Fereday) in the 

 immediate neighbourhoods of the settlements where they are located, shows 

 how much yet remains to be done before we can be said to have a satisfactory 

 knowledge of the insect-fauna of New Zealand. The representatives of this 

 almost exclusively wood-eating coleopterous family are evidently much more 

 numerous in species there than in the British Isles, 57 being already known ; 

 whereas in Britain we have only 56, a number not likely to be increased by 

 future researches. It would be proper, doubtless, to withdraw from the New 

 Zealand list four of the species as being evidently introduced (three from 

 Australia and one from Europe), thus leaving 53 only; but, on the other 

 hand, several undescribed species exist in private collections. 



The remarks I had occasion to make in a former paper on the family 

 Geodephaga, as to the strong endemicity of the New Zealand Coleopterous 

 fauna, are more than justified by the subsequent study of the family Longi- 

 cornia. A close and repeated examination of all parts of the external 

 structure, which afford characters for judging on the affinity of forms in this 

 difficult group, has resulted in showing that very few indeed of the New Zea- 

 land genera are found in other parts of the world. Out of the total number 

 of 35, no fewer than 26, as far as at present known, are peculiar to the 

 islands; and about a dozen of these have no near relationship to forms 

 occurring elsewhere, the rest being more or less related to genera found in 

 Lord Howe's Island, New Caledonia, and [Australia. It is in these two latter 

 countries that seven of the other nine genera occur, one only of them 



din 



and 



three introduced from Australia, are peculiar to the islands. 



Coleoptera Longicorxia. 

 Family Prionidae. 



Prionoplus reticularis. 



Prionoplus reticularis, White, Dieffenbach's 'New Zealand,' ii, p. 276; Westwood, 

 Arcana Entomologica, ii, p. 25, t.56. f.l. 



Northern and Southern islands. 



