181 



TRUE MELOLONTHIDES. 



Lacordaire (whose classification I follow as closely as 

 possible) divides the "Family" Lamellicornes into two 

 "Legions," distinguished from each other by the arrangement 

 of the abdominal stigmata — one of them exemplified plenti- 

 fully in Australia by Aphodius, Onthophagus, and such like 

 (usually known for the most part as "dung beetles") ; the 

 other of them exemplified even more plentifully in Australia 

 by the beetles commonly called ''chafers." This second 

 "Legion" is divided by Lacordaire into four "Tribes," the 

 first of which (Melolonthides) has formed the subject of the 

 Revision that I have placed before the Royal Society of South 

 Australia during recent years, beginning with 1905, and am 

 still continuing. Lacordaire divided the "Tribe" into nine 

 "subtribes," five of which are known to occur in Australia. 

 My Revision of the third of these subtribes, "Seriooides," 

 is concluded in the preceding pages of this paper, and I now 

 pass on to the fourth of them, which Lacordaire calls "True 

 Melolonthides." These he divides into three "groups," 

 only the third of which (again called "True Melolonthides," 

 the other two being regarded as less essentially Meloionthidj 

 is known to occur in Australia. It contains the non-Aus- 

 tralian genus M eloloivtha and other genera closely allied to 

 it. The generic synonymy of the Australian members of this 

 "tribe" is in much confusion, and must be dealt with before 

 I proceed to deal with the species. Australian species of the 

 tribe have been called by the following generic names : 

 Melolontha (only by the earlier authors, at the time when 

 the name was treated as including very diverse elements, 

 some of which are not now recognized as members even of 

 the tribe "true Melolonthides ' ), Rhizotrogus, Rhopcea, 

 Holophylla, Lepidiota, Lepidoderma, and Neolepidiota. 



Rhizotrogus is a genus of the second of Lacordaire's 

 "groups" of the tribe. Burmeister regarded a species which 

 he described under the name tasmanicus as belonging to 

 Rhizotrogus, but he recognized it as so far aberrant in that 

 genus that he formed a separate subgenus for it under the 

 name Antitrogus. I have before me a species which is 

 almost certainly that described by Burmeister, and it is 

 decidedly not a Rhizotrogus, but a member of the group 

 "true M elolonthides. " Antitrogus, thereforte, must be 

 transferred to the tribe "true Melolonthides," while Rhizo- 

 trogus must drop out of the Catalogue of Australian Coleop- 

 tera. The names Rhopcea and Holophylla were proposed by 

 Erichson (Ins. Deutschl., vol. iii., 1848) for Australian 

 insects, which, however, their author did not name or 

 describe as species. The former was placed by its author 



