308 



9 . Differs in being somewhat stouter, head slightly 

 larger, with eyes more widely separated, antennae and legs 

 somewhat shorter, and tip of abdomen gently rounded instead 

 of truncate. 



Hab. — Northern Queensland ( — Northcote, in H. J. 

 Carter's collection; H. Hacker's No. 217): Cairns (E. Allen). 

 Type, I. 6749. 



A rather small, dingy species; in general appearance like 

 some of the paler species of Oxacis, but with bifid mandibles ; 

 the male has unusually thin antennae, and they are also very 

 thin in the female. The prothorax is of a fairly bright 

 flavous, but the elytra are opaque, paler and dingier, with 

 the tips inf uscated ; the head is black, sometimes diluted with 

 red between the eyes and with parts of the muzzle and its 

 appendages obscurely reddish ; the antennae vary from deep 

 black to a rather dingy brown, the legs are mostly deeply 

 inf uscated, with the tibiae and coxae paler than the other 

 parts, the prosternum and mesosternum are flavous, the rest 

 of the under-surface more or less blackish. 



Oxacis australis (Boi.), Blackb. 



There are twenty-five specimens before me of the species 

 redescribed by Blackburn as Oedemera australis, of Boisduval, 

 but I cannot find on them any conspicuous external feature 

 indicative of sex. The abdomen has the apical segment sub- 

 triangularly produced at its apex, and overhanging this 

 (from the dorsal surface) is a subtriangular pubescent process, 

 with its tip circular and truncated (so as to be practically a 

 pygidium), and at the anal opening there is a hollow space 

 in which the tip of an oedeagus or the tips of an ovipositor 

 may occasionally be seen. There are certainly slight differ- 

 ences in the comparative widths of the apical joint of the 

 maxillary palpi, and in the depth of its black margin (on 

 some specimens it is entirely black), and some specimens have 

 the front tarsi slightly wider than on others, but these are 

 characters that are useless to prove the sex of a single 

 specimen. 



Var. auricomus, n. var. Seven specimens (from Murray 

 Bridge, Adelaide, and Yeelanna), and three from Lake 

 Hattah, in Victoria, differ from the common form in having 

 the pubescence of the upper-surface conspicuously golden (or 

 ochreous), except that on the elytral suture it is very narrowly 

 white ;( 54 > its general shape is also rather narrower. One 



(54) In redescribing the species all that Blackburn said of the 

 clothing was ''breviter pub esc ens" ; as a matter of fact, on the 

 typical form it is fairly dense, and as seen under a magnifying 

 glass (especially on the dark parts) of a snowy-white. 



