460 Coleopterological Notices, IV. 



Besides the characters mentioned, it should be added that the 

 elytral pale spots in suffusus are composed of white and pale brown 

 scales, the larger white areas being narrowly margined with the 

 brown tint, while in seminiveus all the scales are whitish. 



Barini. 



This immense tribe forms an important subdivision of Lacor- 

 daire's second section of those apostasimerous phanerognathic Cur- 

 culionidse, which have the antenna! club articulate or divided by 

 distinct sutures, and the third tarsal joint bilobed. There are, how- 

 ever, several important exceptions to these characters even in the 

 tribe under consideration, and it may prove almost as natural to 

 consider the Barini as forming one of the tribes in the second of 

 two great primary divisions of the Curculionidae — as limited by 

 LeConte — based upon the form of the mesosternal epimera ; the 

 first having the epimera undeveloped laterally and the second 

 having this part produced and angulate upward or ascending at 

 the sides of the body, obliquely truncating the elytra at the humeri 

 and often visible from above. At all events the latter is the principal 

 structural character separating the Barini from other curculionides, 

 and is the most constant and significant feature of the tribe. 1 



Among the few tribes possessing this peculiarity, the Barini may 

 be known at once by the distinct scutellum, generally free beak with 

 obliquely descending or inferior antennal scrobes and by the un- 

 emarginate prosternum, but it must be admitted that there seems 

 to be quite as strong a bond of affinity between the Barini and 

 Cryptorhynchini, as between the former and the Ceutorhynchini, 

 with which they are to be associated by reason of mes-epimeral struc- 

 ture. Lacordaire distinguishes the Barini from the Ceutorhynchini 

 principally by the presence of a distinct scutellum in the former; 

 so, as in many other large and complicated divisions of the Coleop- 

 tera, we are forced to rely for tribal characters mainly upon habitus, 

 supported by one or two tolerably constant special peculiarities. As 

 thus defined by the conformation of the mes-epimera, the Barini 

 include an extremely large proportion of all the special modifications 

 of structure found elsewhere in the CurculionidaB. 



1 In the Zygopini it sometimes occurs it is true, but here it is always sporadic 

 and of but little if any systematic value. 



